- Against my love shall be as I am now,
- With Time’s injurious hand crush’d and o’erworn;
- When hours have drain’d his blood and fill’d his brow
- With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn
- Hath travell’d on to age’s steepy night;
- And all those beauties whereof now he’s king
- Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight,
- Stealing away the treasure of his spring;
- For such a time do I now fortify
- Against confounding age’s cruel knife,
- That he shall never cut from memory
- My sweet love’s beauty, though my lover’s life:
- His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
- And they shall live, and he in them still green.