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.
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,
In the first two lines, Shakespeare seems to be complimenting his ‘fair friend’, which is the muse, the young gentleman. He is saying that the muse will never get old, as he is just the same as the first time when the poem laid his eyes on him.From the third and fourth line, the poet is claiming the muse’s beauty to stay the same although since he first laid eyes upon him, it has been 3 years. We can tell it has been three years as the poet says “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.
Continuation of last quatrain, to emphasize that three years have passed. Again, continuation of that emphasis, saying how spring’s ‘perfumed’ flowers have burned up since the day the poet saw his muse.
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:
The poet is comparing beauty to the hand of a clock, slowly creeping away from ‘his figure’, ‘no pace perceived’ may mean going away so slowly that it is barely noticed. The poet is saying that he may think that the muse’s beauty is evergreen, but in the same way as a clock hand, it is actually changing, but the poet’s eye is deceived.
For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred; Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.
In the last quatrain, the poet is claiming that unborn people (age unbred) missed out on ‘beauty’s summer’, which can be interpreted as the most beautiful person.
