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,
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 mak’st waste in niggarding:
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.
In plain English
We want beautiful people to have children so that beauty doesn't vanish from the world when they age and die. A son or daughter would carry forward what made the parent remarkable, keeping their memory alive in a new generation.
But you're in love with your own reflection—you're using up your own beauty on yourself alone. You're starving the world of what you could give it. You're your own worst enemy, hurting yourself by hoarding what you have.
Right now you're the jewel of the world, the first sign that spring is coming. Yet you're burying your potential inside yourself, like a miser wasting good grain by refusing to plant it. Either have pity on the world and pass yourself on, or you're just a greedy thing—eating up what the world deserves, stealing it from the future and the grave.
