I am looking for a poem by Shakespeare, a sonnet, which is about young love or youth being super important, and old age might as well give up. I can’t find it, and I’ve been looking all night. I am sure it’s a sonnet, and am almost positive of the author but open to others. Help?
Not Shakespeare, and not a sonnet, but Robert Herrick’s To the Virgins, to make much of Time is a very well known poem that expresses those sentiments very clearly and directly.
That’s a good one, but it’s not what I was thinking of.
Here’s a link to sonnet 73, which is definitely about age. The analysis with (glurgy image) also mentions this:
From The Passionate Pilgrim.
Crabbed age and youth
Cannot live together:
Youth is full of pleasaunce,
Age is full of care;
Youth like summer morn,
Age like winter weather;
Youth like summer brave,
Age like winter bare.
There’s also a song from (I think) As You Like It:
The link also says “The sonnet is the third in the group of four which reflect on the onset of age.” It may be one of the other three sonnets. Quite a few of the sonnets deal with age so it may be one outwith these four.