Sonnet 104

To me, my friend, you can never be old,

For as you were when we first saw each other,

Such is your beauty still. Three cold winters
Have shaken the splendour of three summers from the foliage,

Three wonderful springs have I seen turn to autumn

In the course of the four seasons,

The perfumed scents of three Aprils burned up in three hot Junes,

Since first I saw you in all your youthful glory, and you are still young.

Ah! but beauty still moves forward, like the hands of a clock,

Steal forward, with no motion to be observed.

In this way your appearance, which seem to me unchanged,

Is subject to Time's movement, and my eye may be deceived:

Out of my fear that you will lose your looks, hear this, you unborn generations;

Before you came into existence beauty was already dead.

William Shakespeare

* / paraphrase Ed. Amanda Mabillard /