Shakespeare's Sonnets Navigator Summary of Sonnet 22 in the Table of Contents Notes for Sonnet 22

Shakespeare's Sonnet 22


  1    My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
  2    So long as youth and thou are of one date;
  3    But when in thee time's furrows I behold,
  4    Then look I death my days should expiate.
  5    For all that beauty that doth cover thee
  6    Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
  7    Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me:
  8    How can I then be elder than thou art?
  9    O, therefore, love, be of thyself so wary
 10    As I, not for myself, but for thee will,
 11    Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary
 12    As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.
 13      Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain;
 14      Thou gavest me thine, not to give back again.

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