Look In Thy Glass and Tell the Face Thou Viewest
by
William Shakespeare
In this sonnet, Shakespeare asks the young man
to Look in the mirror and tell himself that now is the time to have a child,
who will look like him. If he doesn’t beget a child, he is depriving the world
of his beauty. The poet says, that this young man is a mirror of his mother
and, in him, she can see herself as she was, when she was younger. But if the young
man does not want to be remembered, he may die single and his image will die
with him.
Look In Thy Glass and Tell the Face Thou Viewest
Look in thy glass and
tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that
face should form another,
Whose fresh repair if
now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the
world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so
fair whose uneared womb
Disdains the tillage of
thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond
will be the tomb
Of his self-love, to
stop posterity?
Thou art thy mother’s
glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely
April of her prime;
So thou through
windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles,
this thy golden time.
But if thou live
remembered not to be,
Die
single, and thine image dies with thee.
The
form of the poem is typical of a Shakespearean sonnet: three quatrains and a
rhyming couplet. It has fourteen decasyllabic lines, iambic pentameter, and an
ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme scheme.
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