William Shakespeare, Sonnet ix
Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye
That thou consum'st thyself in single life?
Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die,
4
The world will wail thee, like a makeless wife: [*]
The world will be thy widow, and still weep
That thou no form of thee hast left behind,
When every private widow well may keep,
8
By children's eyes, her husband's shape in mind.
Look, what an unthrift in the world doth spend
Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoyys it;
But beauty's waste hath in the world an end,
12
And kept unus'd, the user so destroys it.
No love toward others in that bosom sits,
That on himself such murderous shame commits.
Notes
line 4: Makeless: mateless. Make and mate are synonymous in our elder writers. [ Back to text ]
Most notes to Shakespeare's sonnets are from Charles Knight's edition, but those in square brackets are mine.