Shakespeare’s Sonnet #68 “Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn”

Sonnet 68

Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,
When beauty lived and died as flowers do now,
Before the bastard signs of fair were born,
Or durst inhabit on a living brow;
Before the golden tresses of the dead,
The right of sepulchers, were shorn away
To live a second life on second head,
Ere beauty’s dead fleece made another gay.
In him those holy antique hours are seen,
Without all ornament, itself and true,
Making no summer of another’s green,
Robbing no old to dress his beauty new.
And him as for a map doth Nature store,
To show false art what beauty was of yore.

Reading of Sonnet 68

The images in the YouTube video are from an original 1609 edition of Shake-speares Sonnets held by the British Library.  It is one of only thirteen copies in existence.  Images courtesy of the Octavo Corporation.  

Text from Original 1609 Quarto

Transcription courtesy of University of Virginia Library:

Thus is his cheeke the map of daies out-worne,
When beauty liu’d and dy’ed as flowers do now,
Before these bastard signes of faire were borne,
Or durst inhabit on a liuing brow:
Before the goulden tresses of the dead,
The right of sepulchers, were shorne away,
To liue a second life on second head,
Ere beauties dead fleece made another gay:
In him those holy antique howers are seene,
Without all ornament, it selfe and true,
Making no summer of an others greene,
Robbing no ould to dresse his beauty new,
And him as for a map doth Nature store,
To shew faulse Art what beauty was of yore.