This sonnet is based in the Elizabethan model.

Indeed considering the layout the sonnet is divided in three quatrains and a couplet. The rhyme scheme is so composed: ABAB in the quatrain and CC in the couplet. The rhyme ties the words together to create musical effects and makes the quatrain compact.

The text refers to the problem of time, the reader notes this through word referring to time: That time leaves, late, such day, after, youth.

In the first quatrain the speaking voice address to his lover. When he looks at himself you can recognise that he is getting old and in order to do that he makes a metaphor comparing himself to autumn, his body is like a tree which lost the leaves (“When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

”).

In the second quatrain the reader understands that the process of death is felt vividly. The poet speaks about the spend of the hours, he likens to " sunset of the day”.

He creates collusion between the second and the third quatrein with an anaphor.

In the third quatrain he uses another metaphor (“That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,”) to express the time is over for him now.

In the couplet the poet invites the reader to love what is there now because it will soon leave.

He uses in the last line language devotion, more strong, which means before.

The entire sonnet is based on semantic coherence through frequent metaphors that suggest that the cycle of view is closing.