[3] Esterman clarifies that throughout the three quatrains of Shakespeare's Sonnet 73; the speaker "demonstrates man's relationship to the cosmos and the parallel properties which ultimately reveal his humanity and his link to the universe.

[3] The first quatrain is described by Seymour-Smith: "a highly compressed metaphor in which Shakespeare visualizes the ruined arches of churches, the memory of singing voices still echoing in them, and compares this with the naked boughs of early winter with which he identifies himself".

Barbara Estermann states that "he is concerned with the change of light, from twilight to sunset to black night, revealing the last hours of life".

[3] Of the third quatrain, Carl D. Atkins remarks, "As the fire goes out when the wood which has been feeding it is consumed, so is life extinguished when the strength of youth is past".

It is composed in iambic pentameter, a poetic metre that has five feet per line, and each foot has two syllables accented weak then strong.

If Shakespeare's use of a complete phrase within the rhyme scheme implies a statement then the use of a consistent metaphor at the end of each quatrain shows both the author's acknowledgement of his own mortality and a cynical view on aging.

[9] Bernhard Frank criticizes the metaphors Shakespeare uses to describe the passage of time, be it the coming of death or simply the loss of youth.

The sun goes away in the winter, but returns in the spring; it sets in the evening, but will rise in the morning; but the tree that has been chopped into logs and burned into ashes will never grow again.

Frank concludes by arguing that the end couplet, compared to the beautifully crafted logic of pathos created prior, is anticlimactic and redundant.

In the scene in Pericles an emblem or impresa borne on a shield is described as bearing the image of a burning torch held upside down along with the Latin phrase Qui me alit, me extinguit ("what nourishes me, destroys me").

In 1585 Daniel published the first English treatise and commentary on emblems, The Worthy Tract of Paulus Jovius,[18] which was a translation of Paolo Giovio's Dialogo Dell’ Imprese Militairi et Amorose (Rome 1555).

Appended to this work is "A discourse of Impreses", the first English collection of emblems, in which Daniel describes an impresa that contains the image of a down-turned torch: Kau's suggestion, however, has been confuted, because Kau made it crucial to his argument that Shakespeare and Daniel both used the Latin word quod rather than qui, however Shakespeare in fact nowhere uses the word quod.

[20] According to Alan R. Young, the likeliest source is Claude Paradin's post 1561 book Devises Heroïques, primarily because of the exactness and the detail with which it supports the scene in Pericles.