a profitless usurer;
tells him that the hours that have made him fair will unfair him; that
he should not let winter's rugged hand deface ere he has begotten a
child, though it were a greater happiness should he beget ten. He asks
if his failure to marry is because he might wet a widow's eye, and
then in successive Sonnets cries shame on his friend for being so
improvident. He tells him that when he shall wane, change toward age,
he should have a child to perpetuate his youth; and the thought again
brings to the poet the vision of winter, summer's green borne on
winter's bier, and he urges him that he should prepare against his
coming end, by transmitting his semblance to another; that he should
not let so fair a house fall to decay, but should uphold it against
the stormy blasts of winter by begetting a son; seeing in his friend
so much of beauty, he prognosticates that his friend's end is
beauty's doom and date. Noting that nothing in nature can hold its
perfection long, he sees his friend, most rich in youth, but Time
debating with decay, striving to change his day to night, and urges
him to make war upon the tyrant Time by wedding a maiden who shall
bear him living flowers more like him than any painted counterfeit. He
tells him that could he adequately portray his beauty, the world would
make him a liar, and then closes this theme by saying:

But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice in it, and in my rhyme.

Any impression as to the age of the poet's friend which this brief
synopsis of the first seventeen Sonnets conveys, I think will be
increased by reading the Sonnets themselves. I have refrained from
stating any portions of Sonnets II. and VII., desiring to present to
the reader their exact words. Sonnet VII. reads as follows:

Lo! in the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
Serving with looks his sacred majesty;
And having _climb'd the steep-up heavenly hill,
Resembling strong youth in his middle age_,
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
Attending on his golden pilgrimage;
But when from highmost pitch, with weary car,
Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day,
The eyes, 'fore duteous, now converted are
From his low tract, and look another way:
_So thou, thyself out-going in thy noon,
Unlook'd on diest, unless thou get a son._

The poet sees his friend, as