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.
In plain English
You haven't aged a day in my eyes, my friend. Three full cycles of seasons have passed since I first saw you, but your beauty looks exactly as fresh as it did then. Spring after spring has turned to autumn, yet you seem unchanged—still green and vital.
But here's the trap: beauty fades without us noticing it happening, like the hand of a clock moving so smoothly we can't see it shift. Your face may look the same to me, but that could be because my eye is fooling itself. Time is working on you even when I can't see the work happening.
So I'm telling you this as a warning for the future: before you were even born, beauty's glory days were already over. Whatever stays lovely about you now is borrowed from a time that's gone.
