# LXVIII explained — Poetry

> Chapter companion for Poetry by William Shakespeare.

## What happens

The poet reflects on the beloved's beauty as a living map of a bygone era, when beauty was natural and unadorned, before artificial wigs and borrowed ornaments corrupted true appearance. Nature preserves the beloved as a model to show false art what genuine beauty once was.

## Themes in this chapter

### Beauty and Transience

The poem contrasts the fleeting, natural beauty of the past with the artificiality of the present, emphasizing the transient nature of true beauty.

### Truth and Deception

The beloved's unadorned beauty is presented as truthful, while contemporary fashion is depicted as deceptive 'false Art.'

## Character check-ins

### Youth

The beloved youth is portrayed as a living relic of an earlier, purer age of beauty.

### Time

Time is referenced through the 'map of days outworn' and the contrast between past and present.

### Nature

Nature is personified as storing the youth to demonstrate true beauty to false Art.

## Key lines

> Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn, When beauty lived and died as flowers do now

His cheek is like a map of a past era, when beauty was natural and fleeting like flowers.

_The poet establishes the youth as a living relic of an earlier, more authentic time._

> To live a second life on second head; Ere beauty’s dead fleece made another gay

To be worn again on another person's head, as when hair from a corpse is used to adorn someone else.

_Criticism of using dead people's hair for wigs, a practice the poet sees as unnatural._

> And him as for a map doth Nature store, To show false Art what beauty was of yore.

Nature preserves him like a map to demonstrate to artificial beauty what true beauty looked like in the past.

_The youth serves as a benchmark of genuine beauty against which modern artifice is measured._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/poetry_28_se/chapters/lxviii
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/poetry_28_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/poetry_28_se/chapters