From fairest creatures we desire increase
Sonnet 1From 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. |
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One always wants there to be more of the nice-looking things, so we don't run out of them. That way, when one lot gets old and dies, there'll still be the younger ones to carry on the beauty, just as the older ones did.
You, though, you're married to your own beauty, and fuel it (in a cannibalistic way) with yourself. There should be plenty of your handsomeness to go around, but you're using it up all for yourself: you're doing yourself a wrong, you know.
You're the cat's whiskers as far as looks go at the moment, but by keeping your beauty to yourself you're dooming it to die with you. You're squandering resources by being so mean about sharing. Listen to what the everybody else wants [i.e. to have a child], or else you'll be using up all both your and the world's resources of loveliness.