![]() ![]() Sonnet 11 The poet once again urges the young man to choose a future in which his offspring carry his vitality forward instead of one in which his natural gifts will be coldly buried.Sonnet 10 This sonnet, expanding the couplet that closes s. 9, accuses the young man of a murderous hatred against himself and his family line and urges him to so transform himself that his inner being corresponds to his outer graciousness and kindness.Sonnet 9 The poet argues that if the young man refuses to marry for fear of someday leaving behind a grieving widow, he is ignoring the worldwide grief that will be caused if he dies single, leaving behind no heir to his beauty.Sonnet 8 The poet observes the young man listening to music without pleasure, and suggests that the young man hears in the harmony produced by the instrument’s individual but conjoined strings an accusation about his refusing to play his part in the concord of “sire and child and happy mother.”.Such is the path that the young man’s life will follow-a blaze of glory followed by descent into obscurity-unless he begets a son. When the sun begins to set, says the poet, it is no longer an attraction. Sonnet 7 This sonnet traces the path of the sun across the sky, noting that mortals gaze in admiration at the rising and the noonday sun. ![]() If the young man lends his beauty and gets in return enormous wealth in the form of children, Death will be helpless to destroy him, since he will continue to live in his offspring. The poet then returns to the beauty-as-treasure metaphor and proposes that the lending of treasure for profit-i.e., usury-is not forbidden by law when the borrower is happy with the bargain. Sonnet 6 Continuing the argument from s. 5, the poet urges the young man to produce a child, and thus distill his own summerlike essence.The beauty of the flowers and thereby the essence of summer are thus preserved. Even though summer inevitably dies, he argues, its flowers can be distilled into perfume. Sonnet 5 In this first of two linked sonnets, the poet compares the young man to summer and its flowers, doomed to be destroyed by winter.Here, the young man’s refusal to beget a child is likened to his spending inherited wealth on himself rather than investing it or sharing it generously. Sonnet 4 The poet returns to the idea of beauty as treasure that should be invested for profit.If the young man decides to die childless, all these faces and images die with him. ![]() Just as the young man’s mother sees her own youthful self reflected in the face of her son, so someday the young man should be able to look at his son’s face and see reflected his own youth. Sonnet 3 The poet urges the young man to reflect on his own image in a mirror.In the other, though still himself subject to the ravages of time, his child’s beauty will witness the father’s wise investment of this treasure. In the first, the young man will waste the uninvested treasure of his youthful beauty. Sonnet 2 The poet challenges the young man to imagine two different futures, one in which he dies childless, the other in which he leaves behind a son.The young man’s refusal to beget a child is therefore self-destructive and wasteful. Only if they reproduce themselves will their beauty survive. ![]()
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