From fairest creatures we desire increase
That thereby beauty's rose might never die
But as the riper should by time decease
His tender heir might bear his memory
But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel
Making a famine where abundance lies
Thy self 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 mak'st waste in niggarding
Pity the world or else this glutton be
To eat the world's due by the grave and thee 	  	 

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 totter'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
	  	  
Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest
Thou dost beguile the world unbless some mother
For where is she so fair whose unear'd womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
Of his self-love to stop posterity
Thou art thy mother's glass and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime
So thou through windows of thine age shalt see
Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time
But if thou live remember'd not to be
Die single and thine image dies with thee 	  	  

Unthrifty loveliness why dost thou spend
Upon thy self thy beauty's legacy
Nature's bequest gives nothing but doth lend
And being frank she lends to those are free
Then beauteous niggard why dost thou abuse
The bounteous largess given thee to give
Profitless usurer why dost thou use
So great a sum of sums yet canst not live
For having traffic with thy self alone
Thou of thy self thy sweet self dost deceive
Then how when nature calls thee to be gone
What acceptable audit canst thou leave
Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee
Which used lives th' executor to be 	  	  

Those hours that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter and confounds him there
Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone
Beauty o'er-snowed and bareness every where
Then were not summer's distillation left
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft
Nor it nor no remembrance what it was
But flowers distill'd though they with winter meet
Leese but their show their substance still lives sweet 	  	

Then let not winter's ragged hand deface
In thee thy summer ere thou be distilled
Make sweet some vial treasure thou some place
With beauty's treasure ere it be self-killed
That use is not forbidden usury
Which happies those that pay the willing loan
That's for thy self to breed another thee
Or ten times happier be it ten for one
Ten times thy self were happier than thou art
If ten of thine ten times refigured thee
Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart
Leaving thee living in posterity
Be not self-willed for thou art much too fair
To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir 	  	  

Lo in the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head each under eye
Doth homage to his new-appearing sight
Serving with looks his sacred majesty
And having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill
Resembling strong youth in his middle age
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still
Attending on his golden pilgrimage
But when from highmost pitch with weary car
Like feeble age he reeleth from the day
The eyes 'fore duteous now converted are
From his low tract and look another way
So thou thyself outgoing in thy noon
Unlooked on diest unless thou get a son 	  	  

Music to hear why hear'st thou music sadly
Sweets with sweets war not joy delights in joy
Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly
Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy
If the true concord of well-tuned sounds
By unions married do offend thine ear
They do but sweetly chide thee who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear
Mark how one string sweet husband to another
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering
Resembling sire and child and happy mother
Who all in one one pleasing note do sing
Whose speechless song being many seeming one
Sings this to thee Thou single wilt prove none

Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye
That thou consum'st thy self in single life
Ah if thou issueless shalt hap to die
The world will wail thee like a makeless wife
The world will be thy widow and still weep
That thou no form of thee hast left behind
When every private widow well may keep
By children's eyes her husband's shape in mind
Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend
Shifts but his place for still the world enjoys it
But beauty's waste hath in the world an end
And kept unused the user so destroys it
No love toward others in that bosom sits
That on himself such murd'rous shame commits 	  	  

For shame deny that thou bear'st love to any
Who for thy self art so unprovident
Grant if thou wilt thou art beloved of many
But that thou none lov'st is most evident
For thou art so possessed with murderous hate
That 'gainst thy self thou stick'st not to conspire
Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate
Which to repair should be thy chief desire
O change thy thought that I may change my mind
Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love
Be as thy presence is gracious and kind
Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove
Make thee another self for love of me
That beauty still may live in thine or thee