William Shakespeare
1564-1616
Sonnet LXVIII
Thus is his
cheek the map of days outworn,
When beauty lived
and died as flowers do now,
Before these bastard
signs of fair were born,
Or durst inhabit on
a living brow;
Before the golden
tresses of the dead,
The right of sepulchres,
were shorn away,
To live a second life
on second head;
Ere beauty's dead
fleece made another gay:
In him those holy
antique hours are seen,
Without all ornament,
itself and true,
Making no summer of
another's green,
Robbing no old to
dress his beauty new;
And him as for a map doth Nature store,
To show false Art what beauty was of yore.
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