- 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 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 deserv’d 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.