Sonnet 2

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,

And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,

Thy youth’s proud livery, so gazed on now,

Will be a tatter’d weed, of small worth held:

Then being ask’d where all thy beauty lies,

Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,

To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,

Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.

How much more praise deserved thy beauty’s use,

If thou couldst answer, ‘This fair child of mine

Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,’

Proving his beauty by succession thine.

This were to be new made when thou art old,

And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.

By the time forty winters have come and gone

And taken a toll like war on your beauty,

People will think the flower they once gazed on

Is a weed, not worth so much as a penny.

They will ask you where all your beauty went

And mock the treasure of your glory days.

To answer them with sunken eyes, glint

And glisten all gone, would end all praise.

How much more honored would your beauty be

If you could show them, “Look what I’ve done—

More beauty made by me than came to me.

I was as moon, but now I’m as sun.”

This would be to grace new upon old

And shine like fire, more than winters are cold.