When forty winters have attacked your brow and wrinkled your beautiful skin, the pride and impressiveness of your youth, so much admired by everyone now, will have become a worthless, tattered weed. Then, when you are asked where your beauty’s gone and what’s happened to all the treasures you had during your youth, you will have to say only within your own eyes, now sunk deep in their sockets, where there is only a shameful confession of greed and self-obsession. How much more praise you would have deserved if you could have answered, ‘This beautiful child of mine shall give an account of my life and show that I made no misuse of my time on earth,’ proving that her beauty, because she is your girl, was once yours! This child would be new-made when you are old and you would see your own blood warm when you are cold.

Poem by: William Shakespeare

This is a hand-painted watercolor painting on arches-rough paper. Scanned in high resolution. 6672 x 8938