Three winters cold Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride, Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn’d In process of the seasons have I seen, Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn’d, Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.

yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand, Steal from his figure and no pace perceiv’d; So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand, Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv’d: For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred; Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.

It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.

This sonnet deals with the destructive force of time as we grow older.

It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form ABAB CDCD EFEF GG and is composed in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions.