Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SONNET: 68, by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE



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SONNET: 68, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn
Last Line: To show false art what beauty was of yore.


Thus 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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