Sonnet · Procreation Sonnets

Sonnet 4

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend

Upon thyself 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 thyself alone,

Thou of thyself 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.

What it's about

The speaker pushes the young man to see beauty not as private property but as a trust. Nature lends beauty with the expectation it will be passed on through children. Keeping it to yourself is theft; using it (reproducing) is the only honest repayment.

In plain English

You're wasting your beauty on yourself alone. Nature gives beauty as a loan, not a gift—and she gives generously, expecting you to pass it on. So why are you hoarding this gift instead of using it the way it was meant to be used?

You're like a miser with a fortune you can't actually spend. When you die, what account will you leave behind? If you keep your beauty locked away, it dies with you. But if you use it—if you have children—that beauty lives on in them, kept safe by a living heir.

Lines that stick

  • Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend / Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?
  • 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.

Themes

  • procreation
  • time
  • selfishness
  • duty
  • beauty
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