Volta project, day 2

The second sonnet:

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II

  When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,

  And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,

  Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now,

  Will be a tatter'd weed of small worth held:

  Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,

  Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;

  To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,

  Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.

  How much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use,

  If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine

  Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,'

  Proving his beauty by succession thine!

    This were to be new made when thou art old,

    And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

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So:  A time travel to the future in the first quatrain  J  And, in the second quatrain, a statement—in the indicative—of a problem that would assume shape at that future time, then a resolution in the subjunctive in the third quatrain.  The couplet is just a summary of the resolution, but does have the nice oppositions new/old and warm/cold in the two lines.  The volta is the if in line 10.

Minor aside:  The same time machine is used very differently by Yeats in this beauty:

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When You are Old

By W.B. Yeats

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.