Sonnet 1
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beautys rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might jump out his warehousing:
But thou, contracted to thine stimulate bright eyes,
Feedst thy lightst flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that ruse at one time the worlds fresh ornament
And only herald to the gimcrack spring,
Within thine hold bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this gourmand be,
To eat the worlds due, by the grave and thee.
Summary
The first sonnet takes it as a given that From fairest creatures we desire increase--that is, that we desire fair creatures to multiply, in order to preserve their beautys rose for the world. That way, when the parent dies (as the riper should by time decease), the child might come up its beauty (His tender heir might bear his memory). In the second quatrain, the speaker chides the young man he loves for being too self-absorbed to think of procreation: he is contracted to his own bright eyes, and feeds his light with the fuel of his own loveliness.
The speaker says that this makes the young man his own unwitting enemy, for it makes a famine where abundance lies, and hoards all the young mans beauty for himself. In the third quatrain, he argues that the young man may now be beautiful--he is the worlds fresh ornament / And only herald to the gaudy spring--but that, in time, his beauty volitioning fade, and he will bury his content within his flowers own bud (that is, he will not pass his beauty on; it will wither with him). In the couplet, the speaker...
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