Source: Project Gutenberg eBook #1041, Shakespeare's Sonnets
Source URL: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1041
Public domain basis: Complete text of the 154 sonnets. Public domain.
Coverage: Complete individual poem extracted from parent edition shakespeares-sonnets at bytes 219-841; checksum a047e236a48b6deba9222f13cd47c4d7f5311f3e09d91365cab23aa00b47fe8e.


# Sonnet 1

I

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.