Poetry Month: Day 24

I was babbling so excitedly yesterday about meeting Poetry Friday friends in San Antonio that I didn't even mention the fact that it was my Blog Birthday.  I started blogging on April 23rd, 2006, so yesterday marked seven years.  It was also Shakespeare's birthday, so I decided to post some Shakespeare.  I've shared many of his sonnets here, but never this one, and its references to age seem appropriate.  He says the only thing we can do, faced with the inevitable depredations of time, is to have kids.  When we're gone, they'll be there to carry on.

Not very cheerful, I suppose, but still beautiful, even though the violet is "past prime, and sable curls, all silvered o'er with white."  I think what's making me think this way is that my hotel bathroom in San Antonio had much brighter lights than my bathroom at home.  I was quite startled by how old I looked in the mirror.  

When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls, all silvered o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
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,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
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.