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Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  Sonnet XXXVII. When Winter snows upon thy golden hairs

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Delia

Sonnet XXXVII. When Winter snows upon thy golden hairs

Samuel Daniel (1562–1619)

WHEN Winter snows upon thy golden hairs,

And frost of Age hath nipped thy flowers near;

When dark shall seem thy day, that never clears,

And all lies withered that was held so dear:

Then take this picture, which I here present thee!

Limned with a pencil, not all unworthy,

Here, see the gifts that GOD and Nature lent thee!

Here, read thy Self! and what I suffered for thee!

This may remain thy lasting monument,

Which, happily, posterity may cherish:

These colours, with thy fading, are not spent;

These may remain, when thou and I shall perish.

If they remain, then thou shalt live thereby!

They will remain, and so thou canst not die!