When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,
Thy youth’s proud livery so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter’d weed of small worth held:
Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;
To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserv’d thy beauty’s use,
If thou couldst answer ‘This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,’
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.
In plain English
When you're forty and wrinkles have claimed your face, the beauty everyone admires now will become worthless—a worn-out garment. If someone asks where all your beauty and youth have gone, what can you say? You can't point to your own hollow eyes and call that an achievement.
But imagine if you could answer differently: 'I have a child who carries my beauty forward.' That would be real praise—proof that your loveliness didn't just vanish, but lived on in them. You'd be remade through them when your own body ages.
This is how to cheat time: by creating life that inherits what you had. You'd feel warmth in your blood again—not in yourself, but in your child—when your own body runs cold.
