English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
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| 128. One Hundred and Fourth Sonnet |
| | | William Shakespeare (1564–1616) |
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| TO me, fair friend, you never can be old, | |
| For as you were when first your eye I eyed | |
| Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold | |
| Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride; | |
| Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn’d | 5 |
| In process of the seasons have I seen, | |
| Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn’d, | |
| Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green. | |
| Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand, | |
| Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived; | 10 |
| So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand, | |
| Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived: | |
| For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred,— | |
| Ere you were born, was beauty’s summer dead. | |
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