My translation:
After you have lived forty years,
And your beautiful face is covered in deep wrinkles,
Your youthful good looks, that everyone admires,
Will become nothing but a trembling old dried up weed.
When people ask you where all your beauty went,
And where, too, is all that sex appeal you used to have,
To have to reply, "Sucked into myself and gone,"
Is such a damned pity, and wasteful way to eulogize your lost beauty.
Your beauty would deserve even more commendation,
If you could answer, "This, my beautiful son or daughter,
Pays the debt of my loss of beauty, and makes the appropriate apologies for my old age"
Which would prove that your beauty still lives in your child.
So you would begin a new life when you are old,
And you would live on in him, even when you are dead.
In Sonnet 2, the author begs the subject to consider that beauty does not last, and old age withers even the most beautiful creatures: "When forty Winters shall beseige thy brow, /And digge deep trenches in thy beauties field." "Winters" is capitalized and, upon the reading of it aloud, should be given great weight. The author has three other seasons to choose from, and he chooses winter; the hardest, darkest time. It is not the summers' heat and spring rains that age us, it is the winter's cold, frigid, cracked iciness that puts trenches in our brows.
Digge deep. Once again, alliteration and elongation, such as in selfe substantiall fewell (1.6). The word dig is onomatopoetic and can be visceral in the saying of it. It's a sweaty man bearing a shovel, carving out the earth, throwing the worms and dirt behind him. Say it five times slowly and you will literally feel like you are digging. Digge deep trenches in thy beauties field. Imagine a flower filled meadow wrecked by the trenches of war. How great a loss is youth! I am twenty seven and in the summer of mine, I would say, and already do not have the blemishless face I had five years ago. Little fine lines have appeared around my eyes and forehead. These things come faster than you think. Consider those in your family who have lost the beauties of their youths, "Oh your grandma used to be so beautiful." Think of actresses like Dakota Fanning, Emma Stone, Kristin Stewart. Or think of Candace Bergen, Cybil Shepherd, and Elizabeth Taylor!! Loss of beauty must be excruciating! These once beautiful faces are now wrought with the scars of life. Shakespeare mercilessly continues this metaphor, prophesying that the gorgeous flowers that now grace the meadow of his face will one day become totter'd weed[s] that have no worth.
Aside: Some translations have taken it upon themselves to go against the 1609 quarto and have changed "totter'd" to "tattered." Because "livery" is the subject of this description, the adjective, be it "tatter'd," now makes reference to his fancy clothes (proud livery), rather than his looks. This interrupts the metaphor and changes meaning mid sentence. I disagree mightily with this arrogant supposition. Reason number one: I like to stay as close to the quarto as possible. When one begins to assume that Shakespeare didn't mean to write this or that, he opens up an entire new can of worms. Number two: The metaphor flows beautifully through the entire thought: his face is a fresh, spring field which, after enough winters, will be reduced to a trembling weed. I suppose I could compromise and allow a double-entendre here, but that does not excuse changing the word. Tottered means trembling, Tattered means frayed. Reason number three: Alexander Schmidt's Shakespeare Lexicon and Quotation Dictionary, defines "livery" in this case not as "dress or garb" but as "outward appearance, aspect." Case closed.
We have established that losing one's youthful good looks to old age is a painful experience. Shakespeare warns his subject, being askt, where all thy beautie lies, you should have a rebuttle ready. Maybe this seems absurd. Who is going to say, "Oh, such a pity you are old when you used to be so beautiful. Where did it go?" Everyone, and if they don't say it they will think it. Did you see Candace Bergen in Sex and the City the Movie Pt 1? She looked old, and overweight and wrinkly. It is the painful truth. When people gain a lot of weight, or get sick, you think others don't make comments? I live in New York City. People comment on strangers all the time. Catcalls abound. You think fat people don't get made fun of to their face? When you are old and ugly, people will look at pictures of you and say, "You were so beautiful, Cybil Shepherd. What happened?" or, "Everyone wanted to do you, man. You were sexy. Where did that beauty go?" If you're hot now, you have it coming for you. Just a fact. Or worse...
Where all the treasure of thy lustie daies. These sonnets are undeniably written to a man. What is the treasure of lust to a man? His penis. I have been alluding to women losing their beauty. A man losing the treasure of [his] lust? He can't get it up, people. Oh, old age. What a thing to look forward to.
How are you going to protect yourself from these nosy jerks? What do you do when you have a woman in bed and you know she longs for the treasure of your lusty days? If you have no children to whom you have bestowed your beauty, you have to shrug your shoulders and say, "Within mine own deepe sunken eyes," lost forever, and because you have no more "treasure," this beauty will never be recovered. "What a waste!" sayeth Shakespeare, "Your beauty is better than anyone living. It deserves reproduction and further praise in copy!" How much better would it be if you could, instead give your accuser a wry smile, because they have probably always been very fat, and never had the amazing talent of being able to produce a sexy heir, and say, "Well, I gave my beauty to my kid since it was mine to give him, and so it lives on!"
Shakespeare answers what the ideal response would be: "this faire child of mine, /Shall sum my count and make my old excuse." The nosy, fat asker of where beauty lies, has is now referred to as a creditor to whom a debt is owed. Remember Sonnet 1: "this glutton be, /to eat the world's due." The youth is so uniquely and strangely beautiful, that he owes the world a child in whom that beauty can live on. The creditor who asks where all thy beautie lies, is knocking at your door ready to repossess your house for the beauty that you owe him. How can you say to him, "I used it up on life." You might as well say, "Vegas." How much better would it be to bring out Susie or Johnny or Hamnet and say, "Here, sir. Because I have invested my talents in a stock that is growing, I can pay that debt to you and the world and then some. This shall sum up my count rather, pay the debt on my account, and you and I are square."
Shakespeare concludes his poem with a familiar tactic, the very same we saw in Sonnet 1; appeal to his mortality. Reproduce and you live on forever. Do not reproduce and you will die. This means of persuadingthe youth to marry is repeated relentlessly in the last couplet for each of these first seventeen sonnets, although there is an abrupt transition in sixteen and seventeen that are the beginnings of a swift change in the author's heart.
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