Looking in his mirror, the speaker refuses to believe he’s aging as long as the beloved is young. The moment he spots wrinkles on that face, he’ll feel death closing in. His reasoning is startlingly intimate: his very life and beauty are stitched into the other person. His heart lives in the beloved’s breast, and the beloved’s heart beats in his own, so age is shared—how could he possibly be older? This isn’t just affection; it’s a complete merging of selves. The mood is tender but shadowed by dread. He urges the young man to be careful, promising to protect that borrowed heart as a nurse shields a child. Then the final couplet delivers a quiet, possessive warning: “Don’t think you can take your heart back when mine is dead. You gave it to me forever.” Love becomes an irrevocable gift, leaving the poem suspended between devotion and a faint, haunting threat.
Sonnet 22: My glass shall not persuade me I am old — Summary
My glass shall not persuade me I am old, So long as youth and thou are of one date; But when in thee time's furrows I behold, Then look I death my days should expiate. For all that beauty that doth cover thee, Is but the seemly raiment of my heart, Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me: How can I then be elder than thou art? O! therefore love, be of thyself so wary As I, not for myself, but for thee will; Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary As tender nurse her babe from faring ill. Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain, Thou gav'st me thine not to give back again.