William Shakespeare (1564-1616). Her Autumn. William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. 1907. The Book of Elizabethan Verse

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William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.

Her Autumn

By William Shakespeare (1564–1616)


WHEN 1 I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night; 2
When I behold the violet past prime, 3
And sable curls all silver’d o’er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,	5
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer’s green, all girded up in sheaves,
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard; 4
Then of thy beauty do I question make, 5
That thou among the wastes of time must go,	10
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing ’gainst Time’s scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

Note 1. When I do count the clock that tells the time. Sonnet xii., in Shake-speare’s Sonnettes, 1609. This sonnet seems to be a gathering into one of Sonnets v., vi., vii. [back]

Note 2. Lines 1, 2, like Sonnet vii., speak of the decay and loss of the brightness and beauty of the day; lines 3–8, like Sonnets v., vi., of the loss and beauties of the year. (Dowden.) [back]

Note 3. Violet past prime: Cf. Hamlet, act i. sc. 3: “A violet in the youth of primy nature.” [back]

Note 4. Line 8. Cf. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, act ii. sc. 1:

	The green corn
	Hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard.

[back]

Note 5. Question make: consider. [back]

CONTENTS · GLOSSARY · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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