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
From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty’s rose might never die, But, as the riper should by time decease, His tender heir might bear his memory. But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feed’st thy light’s