The thought is: your beauty may be passing; it may be that my eye that sees it not, is deceived. We should carefully note the words, "Three winters cold," "Since first I saw you fresh, which _yet_ are green." Though they present no clear or sharp indication as to the age of his friend, yet I think that of them this may be fairly said: the word "green" is used as opposed to ripe or matured, and his friend's age is such that three years seem to the poet to have carried him a step toward maturity. And so reading these words, they harmonize with the expression of the poet's fear that his great love for his friend may have prevented him from seeing his beauty like a dial hand, Steal from his figure. In Sonnet LXX. the poet says of his friend: And thou present'st a pure unstained prime. Thou hast pass'd by _the ambush of young days_, Either not assail'd, or victor being charged. In Sonnet LXXVII. the poet says: The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show Of mouthed graves will give thee memory; Thou by thy dial's shady stealth mayst know Time's thievish progress to eternity. Sonnet CXXVI. is as follows: O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power Dost _hold Time's fickle glass, his sickle, hour_; Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st Thy _lovers withering as thy sweet self grow'st_; If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack, As thou goest onwards, _still_ will pluck thee back, She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill May _time disgrace_ and wretched _minutes_ kill. Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure! She may _detain_, but not _still_ keep, her treasure: Her audit, though delay'd, answer'd must be, And her quietus is to render thee. This is the last Sonnet which the poet addresses to his friend. Except the last two, all that follow are of his mistress, and are of the same theme as Sonnets XL., XLI., and XLII., and, we may fairly infer, are of the same date. If so, Sonnet CXXVI. is practically the very latest of the entire series, and we may deem it a leave-taking, perhaps not of his friend, but of the labor that had so long moved him. Perhaps for that reason its words should be deemed more significant, and it should be read and considered more carefully.[12] All its thoughts seem responsive to the central suggestion that his friend appears much younger than he is. To the poet he seems still a boy because he has so held the youth and freshness of boyhood that it is not inappropriate to say that he holds in his power the glass of Time; Nature has plucked him back to show her triumph over Time, but she cannot continue to do so, but will require of him full audit for all his years.