Sonnet 104

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Shakespeare. Sonnet 1

«To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed». 

Sonnet 104 indicates for the first time that the poet and young man’s relationship has gone on for three years. Evoking seasonal imagery from previous sonnets, the poet notes that “Three winters cold / . . . three summers’ pride, / Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned / In process of the seasons I have seen.”

Sonnet 104
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To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
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 perceived;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion and mine eye may be deceived:
For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred;
Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.

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Only now is the poet willing to question whether the youth’s beauty remains as it was “when first your eye I eyed”: “So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand, / Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived.” No matter, though, the poet argues in the concluding couplet, if the youth’s beauty has deteriorated: No beauty has ever equaled the youth’s appearance, nor will anything in the future outshine his lovely visage.

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Credits

English audio from YouTube Channel Socratica

Summary from Cliffsnotes.com

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