Sonnet 2
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 totter'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.
The poet looks ahead to the time when the youth will have aged, and uses this as an argument to urge him to waste no time, and to have a child who will replicate his father and preserve his beauty. The imagery of ageing used is that of siege warfare, forty winters being the besieging army, which digs trenches in the fields before the threatened city. The trenches correspond to the furrows and lines which will mark the young man's forehead as he ages. He is urged not to throw away all his beauty by devoting himself to self-pleasure, but to have children, thus satisfying the world, and Nature, which will keep an account of what he does with his life.
2 comments:
I was just yesterday thinking of aging. Interesting views on Shakespeare, professor.
Aging is the worse feeling for occidental men.
It's what make the different between us and other civilisations like Arabs or Asians.
In those countries, an old person is worshiped because they see wisdom and respect in those who lived so many years of pain and experiences.
Today, we are juste looking to «youth» as a value but they are unexperienced and often ignorant in many ways.
Yes, aging in occidental countries is very painful and I find it a real non sense too.
The value of a human is misplaced when all we see in it is the «subjective beauty» based on fashion, glamour or popularity etc...
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