William Shakespeare, Sonnet lxviii
Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,
When beauty liv'd and died as flowers do now,
Before these bastard signs of fair were born, [*]
4
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,
8
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,
12
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.
Notes
line 3: Fair -- beauty. [ Back to text ]
Most notes to Shakespeare's sonnets are from Charles Knight's edition, but those in square brackets are mine.