Who is fortie winters?

Randall,

My first thought on reading this sonnet was how closely related it is to the first sonnet.  One element I felt in the first sonnet, which seems more pronounced here, is the relationship between the speaker and the subject of the poem.  The "proud livery, so gaz'd on now" makes me wonder whether it's the world doing the gazing, or whether it's the speaker.  It is difficult not to read the youth's forecast--'trenches,' 'deepe sunken eyes'-- as a mirror of the speaker's own condition.  Similarly, the speaker seems to know intimately the feeling of being young, and his praise of the youth's beauty reads as a sorry memory of the speaker's own lost youth.  It is possible, too, that the youth is more than just the site of the speaker's meditation, but is the object of his affection.

Either way, the two beings each take on a duality in this reading--the soon-to-be-old youth is not very different from the once-young but aging speaker.  This makes the closing couplet especially interesting; yes, the speaker is urging the youth to procreate, but the speaker also seems to be working out a bit of private regenesis in his self-identification with the youth.  At some point, we're going to have to start looking into love, lust, and admiration, and ask what kind of ontological unity is possible through these relations.

I'm interested in this sonnet's questions about beauty too, but I'll save those thoughts until I can pull them together a bit more.  In closing, here's a little treasure from the back of Booth's edition of the sonnets--excerpts from the 1567 translation of Ovid's Metamorphosis, preceded by a note on how Shakespeare borrows Ovid's basic structure of presenting like thoughts next to each other, with gradual changes.  Everything changes, but it stays the same.

What?  seest thou not how that the yeere as representing playne
The age of man, departes itself in quarters fowre?  first bayne
And tender in the spring it is, even like a sucking babe.
Then greene, and voyd of strength, and lush, and foggye in the blade,
And cheeres the husbandman with hope.  Then all things florish gay.
The earth with flowers of sundry hew then seemeth for too play,
And vertue small or none too herbes there dooth as yit belong.
The yeere from springtyde passing foorth too sommer, wexeth strong,
Becommeth lyke a lusty youth.  For in our lyfe through out
There is no tyme more plentifull, more lusty whote and stout.
Then followeth Harvest when the heate of youth growes sumwhat cold,
Rype, meeld, disposed meane betwixt and yoongman and an old,
And sumwhat sprent with grayish heire.  Then ugly winter last
Like age steales on with trembling steppes, all bald, or overcast
With shirle thinne heare whyght as snowe. (Ovid XV 221-235)

You'll recognize some body-land imagery here, but also particular idiomatic words--lusty, sum.  Possibly another sense of weeds, too--the young man is the weed, "greene, and voyd of strength, and lush."  Fun stuff.

-Chris