Sonnet 9

1 Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye,
2 That thou consum’st thyself in single life?
3 Ah, if thou issueless shalt hap to die,
4 The world will wail thee like a makeless wife,
5 The world will be thy widow and still weep,
6 That thou no form of thee hast left behind,
7 When every private widow well may keep,
8 By children’s eyes, her husband’s shape in mind:
9 Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend
10 Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;
11 But beauty’s waste hath in the world an end,
12 And kept unused the user so destroys it:
13 No love toward others in that bosom sits
14 That on himself such murd’rous shame commits.