1

    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.
 
  2

    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 tattered 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
           deserved 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.
 
  3

    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 uneared 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
              remembered not to be,
            Die single and thine image
            dies with thee.
 
  4

    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.
 
  5

    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 distilled
         though they with winter meet,
             Leese but their show,
         their substance still lives sweet.
 
  6

    Then let
           not winter's ragged hand deface,
         In thee thy summer ere
             thou be distilled: