Shakespeare / Sonnet 1

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.