Sonnet 104
To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
aging
time
beauty
friendship
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.
What It Means
Three years have passed since Shakespeare first saw the young man, and to him he looks exactly the same. He reasons that the human eye can't detect gradual change — we can't see the minute hand moving on a clock. But seasons have turned three times. Shakespeare warns: you may look the same to me, but time is moving on the dial even when I can't see it. It's a rare moment of precise biography in the sequence — three years of friendship acknowledged directly.
Context
Part of the Fair Youth sequence. If the relationship began around 1592–93, three years would place this at around 1595–96.
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