Sonnet 105: Let Not My Love Be Called Idolatry
To 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.
Sonnet 1o5: Translation to modern English
Don’t let anyone call my love idolatry nor say that I regard my beloved as an idol because all my songs and praises have been directed to one person and always will be. The one I love is kind today, will be kind tomorrow – forever wonderfully constant. And so, because my verse is confined to something that’s permanently constant, it always expresses the same thing, never varying. All I write about is beauty, kindness and faithfulness. I write about the beautiful, kind and faithful in different variations, and that is how I expend my creativity – three themes in one, offering wonderful scope. Beauty, kindness and faithfulness are often found separately and have never been found in one person until now.
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