Skip to main content
or search all Shakespeare texts
Back to main page

Shakespeare's Sonnets - Sonnet 63

Cite

Navigate this work

Shakespeare's Sonnets - Sonnet 63
Jump to

Sonnet 63

63

Synopsis:

By preserving the youthful beauty of the beloved in poetry, the poet makes preparation for the day that the beloved will himself be old.

 
Against my love shall be, as I am now,
With Time’s injurious hand crushed and o’erworn;
When hours have drained his blood and filled his brow
4With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn
Hath traveled on to age’s steepy night,
And all those beauties whereof now he’s king
Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight,
8Stealing away the treasure of his spring;
For such a time do I now fortify
Against confounding age’s cruel knife,
That he shall never cut from memory
12My sweet love’s beauty, though my lover’s life.
 His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
 And they shall live, and he in them still green.