Sonnet 104

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,

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:

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.

Child, for me you can never grow old.

The same light I saw when I first saw you

I still see. Winters, unremittingly cold,

Changed the tenor of the sky’s blue.

Springs were sucked dry by autumns.

Seasons have wheeled by.

I’ve tasted many April perfumes

That every summer die.

The beauty goes with the time,

And it happens as though invisible.

Morning, still, and suddenly the dream

Is night, unwakeable.

So in case tomorrow your beauty is gone,

I’ll curse time now, the philistine.