To me, fair friend, you never can be old (Sonnet 104)

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I ey’d,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold,
Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride,
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn’d,
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn’d,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceiv’d;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv’d:
    For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred:
    Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.

Credit

This poem is in the public domain. 

About this Poem

Shakespeare’s sonnets were composed in the late 1590s and published in 1609 as the book Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Almost all of the 154 poems in the book were composed of three quatrains and a couplet, a form now recognized as the Shakespearean sonnet.