When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls, all silvered o’er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves,
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing ’gainst Time’s scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.
In plain English
When I watch the clock tick away the hours and see daylight swallowed by darkness, when I notice flowers fading and dark hair turning silver, when I see bare trees that once sheltered animals and grain bundled up like a corpse on a stretcher — I'm forced to confront a hard question about your beauty.
Everything beautiful dies. Things wear out as fast as new things appear. There's no defense against time's blade except one: having children. That's how you survive when time finally takes you — through them.
The sonnet is a version of an argument Shakespeare keeps returning to in these early poems: the only answer to mortality is reproduction. Your beauty will fade; the only immortality available is through your descendants.
