Sonnet 2

   Sonnet 2 has a common meaning with sonnet 1.  The meaning being that youth's beauty will go to waste unless a child is brought into the world to renew the beauty.  This sonnet is often considered a "carpe diem" poem.  "Carpe diem" means, seize the day.  The speaker tells the subject to "seize the day" by having a child to show others his beauty.  The sonnet says that in forty years, the subject will be old and wrinkled.  Shakespeare wrote "forty winters" in place of forty years.  He used winter to make apparent the closeness of death.  Shakespeare often used seasons to describe the life cycle.  In the second line of the poem, "deep trenches" on "beauty's field" could mean the wrinkles on skin.  Then, the fourth line means that old age is not something to be glorified.  The second quatrain of the sonnet tells the subject that when he is old, if the only proof of his former beauty can be given with his eyes, it is a real shame.  The third quatrain tells that a "fair child" best proves one's beauty.  The last line of the sonnet uses the words "blood warm" to decibel a child and "cold" to describe age.  The warmth could also refer to summer and the cold to winter keeping in mind that Shakespeare often used seasons to represent the journey from life to death.