Shakespeare's "Sonnet 73" as a Poetic Emblem

This close reading addresses the couplet, puzzling because of its generality, which critics try to constrict by forced specificity. The quatrain-to-quatrain sequence of the image clusters suggests the theme of transitoriness and parallels The Order of The Burial of the Dead in The Book of Common Prayer, which burial ritual justifies the generality of the couplet implied by the theme of the sonnet: sic transit gloria mundi