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Question:

HELP! Shakespeare poem...?

TO me, fair Friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters' cold
Have from the forests shook three summers' pride;

Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd 5
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.

Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived; 10
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived:

For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred,—
Ere you were born, was beauty's summer dead.

"For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred"
I have asked this questinon many times now, but I keep getting different explainations on what this line means.
So who is he talking to?
Unbred? not born yet? is yhis what it means? is so, then who?

English is not my mother tounge.


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

I believe he is saying that he believes that his friend is still as beautiful as he was when he first saw him three years ago (li 1 - 8); however, he recognizes that beauty may fade without him ever noticing (li 9 - 12). So, "for fear of which" (meaning, he's afraid it might be true that he can't tell that his friend is in fact aging), he addresses those to come - those whose ages have not yet been bred, or concieved - and says that before they are ever born, beauty has failed, i.e. that his friend was most beautiful and they will never get to see it.