| AGAINST my love shall be, as I am now | |
| With Time’s injurious hand crush’d and o’erworn; | |
| When hours have drain’d his blood and fill’d his brow | |
| With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn | |
| Hath travell’d on to age’s steepy night; | 5 |
| And all those beauties whereof now he ’s king | |
| Are vanishing or vanish’d out of sight, | |
| Stealing away the treasure of his spring; | |
| For such a time do I now fortify | |
| Against confounding age’s cruel knife, | 10 |
| That he shall never cut from memory | |
| My sweet love’s beauty, though my lover’s life: | |
| His beauty shall in these black lines be seen, | |
| And they shall live, and he in them still green. |