63
Against my love shall be, as I am now,
With Time's injurious hand crush'd and o'erworn;
When hours have drain'd his blood and fill'd his brow
With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn 4
Hath travell'd on to age's steepy night;
And all those beauties whereof now he's king
Are vanishing or vanish'd out of sight,
Stealing away the treasure of his spring; 8
For such a time do I now fortify
Against confounding age's cruel knife,
That he shall never cut from memory
My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life: 12
His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
And they shall live, and he in them still green.
64
When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd
The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-raz'd,
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage; 4
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store; 8
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate—
That Time will come and take my love away. 12
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.
1 Against: when, in anticipation of the time when
5 steepy: steep, surmounted with difficulty
10 confounding: destroying
12 though: though he cuts
2 rich-proud . . . age: costly and splendid tombs or monuments
3 sometime: once, formerly
4 brass eternal slave: eternal brass the slave
9 state: condition of things
10 state itself: grandeur
13 which: this thought which
