English poem
Sonnet 68: Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn
Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn, When beauty lived and died as flowers do now, Before these bastard signs of fair were born, 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; 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, 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.
More by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 64: When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd
- Sonnet 65: Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea
- Sonnet 66: Tired with all these, for restful death I cry
- Sonnet 67: Ah! wherefore with infection should he live
- Sonnet 69: Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view
- Sonnet 6: Then let not winter's ragged hand deface
- Sonnet 70: That thou art blam'd shall not be thy defect
- Sonnet 71: No longer mourn for me when I am dead