Thus us his cheek the map of days outworn...
Sonnet 68Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,
When beauty lived and died as flowers do now, Before the bastard signs of fair were born, Or durst inhabit on a living brow; Before the golden tresses of the dead, The right of sepulchres, were shorn away, To live a second life on second head; Ere beauty's dead fleece made another gay: In him those holy antique hours are seen, Without all ornament, itself and true, Making no summer of another's green, Robbing no old to dress his beauty new; And him as for a map doth Nature store, To show false Art what beauty was of yore. |
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(Continuing from theme of last two sonnets)
His beauty is a reminder of times gone by, before these misbegotten beatifying tricks were invented, or people dared employ them. Back then lovely people lived and died as naturally as flowers. They didn’t cut hair from a corpse and try to make themselves pretty with zombie-wigs, like they do now. His beauty stands on its own, unaugmented, as it used to do in the old days – he’s a reminder of how it used to be.