From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decrease,
His tender heir mught bear his memeory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy light’st flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.
Sonnet 1 in modern English
We want all beautiful creatures to reproduce themselves so that beauty’s flower will not die out; but as an old man dies in time, he leaves a young heir to carry on his memory. But you, concerned only with your own beautiful eyes, feed the bright light of life with self-regarding fuel, making beauty shallow by your preoccupation with your looks. In this you are your own enemy, being cruel to yourself. You who are the world’s most beautiful ornament and the chief messenger of spring, are burying your gifts within yourself And, dear selfish one, because you decline to reproduce, you are actually wasting that beauty. Take pity on the world or else be the glutton who devours, with the grave, what belongs to the world.
Watch Sir Patrick Stewart read Shakespeare’s sonnet 1
The 1609 Quarto sonnet 1 version
From faireſt creatures we deſire increaſe,
That thereby beauties Roſe might neuer die,
But as the riper ſhould by time deceaſe,
His tender heire might beare his memory:
But thou contracted to thine owne bright eyes,
Feed’ſt thy lights flame with ſelfe ſubſtantiall fewell,
Making a famine where aboundance lies,
Thy ſelfe thy foe,to thy ſweet ſelfe too cruell:
Thou that art now the worlds freſh ornament,
And only herauld to the gaudy ſpring,
Within thine owne bud burieſt thy content,
And tender chorle makſt waſt in niggarding:
Pitty the world,or elſe this glutton be,
To eate the worlds due,by the graue and thee.
See the British Library’s 1609 Quarto.
well not really a poem person but just getting to like it a lil bit, i’ll say from my newby experience i feel like its talking abt how when humans have this percentage of good people who are very rare so wen they die there is no one to replace that beauty in them idk dats wat i think
Your piece about the Shakespear sonnet was greatly disrespectful. The poem is referring to the rodents swarming this earth like you, and the relaxed scum of you generation.
someone needs to calm down a bit, he was just giving his opinion.
What the heck, man? This kid said he was new, and I think he made a great interpretation of a difficult-to-understand poem. You’re heckling him for bad grammar when you could just look at the meaning.
Many speculate that this poem was written to a man that Shakespeare admired greatly, either romantically or not, and was urging him to marry and father a child so that man wouldn’t be lost to time. It’s a theme in many of the early sonnets!
This is not only the “speculation” of “many”. It is the sonnet’s ‘clear’ message –to any who closely scrutinizes Shakespeare’s imagery.
I’m 75, and I came here after seen Francis McDonmond (sorry spelling) Nomadland. But I read this sonnet in high school. I remember not caring much about it. As far as what it means, well it’s what it says. There are people like it everywhere. It’s a thing we all do before we age, usually.