Sonnet 2: “A tattered weed of small worth held”

When forty Winters shall besiege thy brow,

And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,

Thy youth’s proud livery so gaz’d on now,

Will be a totter’d weed of small worth held.

Then being ask’d, where all thy beauty lies,

Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,

To say within thine own deep sunken eyes,

Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.

How much more praise deserv’d thy beauty’s use,

If thou couldst answer “this fair child of mine

Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse”

Proving his beauty by succession thine.

     This were to be new made when thou art old,

     And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.

“…The first two quatrains address the youth in harsher tones than we’ve heard, softened by the appearance of the word beautytwice. They remind him that he will someday be besieged by age, his proud livery becoming tattered weeds, his eyes deep sunken, his shame all-eating, his praise thriftless—with emphasis at the end of the second quatrain on the shame. The third quatrain brightens, bringing the future’s fair child into the present and adding beauty twice more, proving the child’s worth. The couplet ends with antitheses: new/old; warm/cold—but beauty is absent from these lines. These shifts in tone are stronger than they were in Sonnet 1. They give a sense that W. has moods and give more depth and feeling to his voice. W. sounds sterner to me in Sonnet 2. It leaves me wondering what changes the next sonnet will bring.”

—Shakespeare’s Sonnets Among His Private Friends, p.21 (publication date 10/1/21)