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 tatter'd weed, of small worth held:
Then being ask'd 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 deserved 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.
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It seems to me sometimes as if Shakespeare is going through the sonnett sequence as an exercise for heightening his language-- in order to construct his latter written plays. This sonnett reminds me so much of King Lear, and his wish to have his daughter's cheeks "fretted" and he describes the wrinkles on faces as channels for tears-- one of the great blazons in Shakespeare...this sonnett takes me headlong into Lear.
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