From Fairest Creatures We Desire Increase

Sonnet 1: From Fairest Creatures We Desire Increase

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.

A version in Modern English for those who need assistance like me!

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.

Thanks to: nosweatshakespeare.com