Sonnet 68

Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,

When beauty lived and died as flowers do now,

Before the bastard signs of fair were born,

Or durst inhabit on a living brow;

Before the golden tresses of the dead,

The right of sepulchres, were shorn away,

To live a second life on second head;

Ere beauty’s dead fleece made another gay:

In him those holy antique hours are seen

Without all ornament, itself and true,

Making no summer of another’s green,

Robbing no old to dress his beauty new.

And him as for a map doth Nature store,

To show false Art what beauty was of yore.

In her eyes is a map, some stars to guide

Us back to days when beautiful people

Were blessings and lived and died

In truth of beauty, not orphans of the steeple.

This was before beauty was bought and sold,

Fostering envy, feigning truth,

Traded on markets in fool’s gold

To make all a false wealth.

In her we can still see

A holy hour, a temple’s relic—

Not a tawdry knockoff commodity.

She still wears her natural tunic.

Watch her now—history’s truthful compass—

To show us the beauty we so desperately miss.