The Complete Poems of William Shakespeare

Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,

And having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill,

Be not self-willed for thou art much too fair,
To be death’s conquest and make worms thine heir.

With beauty’s treasure ere it be self-killed:

Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place,

Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse’

Making a famine where abundance lies,

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 tattered weed of small worth held:
Then being asked, 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.

So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.
But if thou live remembered not to be,
Die single and thine image dies with thee.