Sonnet 104: to Me, Fair Friend, You Never Can Be Old
Sonnet 104: to Me, Fair Friend, You Never Can Be Old - form Summary
A Volta Frames Reassurance
This Shakespearean sonnet uses the sonnet’s compact argument to stage a shift: the speaker first insists the friend’s beauty remains unchanged, then acknowledges time’s stealthy erosion. The poem’s volta reorients from confident praise to anxious doubt, admitting perception can be deceived and ultimately asserting a paradox about beauty and origin. The tight sonnet structure concentrates this move, making the emotional reversal feel inevitable and persuasive.
Read Complete AnalysesTo me, fair friend, you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I ey’d, 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 perceiv’d; So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand, Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv’d: For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred: Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.
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