Sonnet 2
When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,
aging
procreation
legacy
time
When forty winters shall beseige 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 ask'd 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 deserved 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.
What It Means
Another procreation argument, set forty years in the future. Shakespeare asks: when you're old and your beauty is gone, what will you have to show for it? If the answer is 'my own sunken eyes,' that's shameful. But if you have a child, you can point to them and say: there is my beauty, continued. The sonnet is built on a contrast between two futures. One is shameful self-absorption; the other is a kind of immortality through children.
Context
Second in the Procreation sequence (1–17). The image of 'forty winters' digging trenches in a brow is one of Shakespeare's more vivid aging metaphors in the early sonnets.
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