The Sonnets IX - Is it for fear to wet a widows eye
By William Shakespeare
Is it for fear to wet a widows eye,
That thou consumst thy self in single life?
Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die,
The world will wail thee like a makeless wife;
The world will be thy widow and still weep
That thou no form of thee hast left behind,
When every private widow well may keep
By childrens eyes, her husbands shape in mind:
Look! what an unthrift in the world doth spend
Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;
But beautys waste hath in the world an end,
And kept unused the user so destroys it.
No love toward others in that bosom sits
That on himself such murdrous shame commits.