- 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.