Sonnet 3
Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest
procreation
mirrors
legacy
time
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 unear'd 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 shall see
Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.
But if thou live, remember'd not to be,
Die single, and thine image dies with thee.
What It Means
Shakespeare tells the young man to look in a mirror. What he sees is not just himself but a debt to the future: he owes a child to the world, because his mother gave him that beauty and he must pass it on. If the young man refuses to have children, some woman loses the chance to be a mother. The mirror image is clever: you can see your own face, but a mirror only shows the present. A child would show your face in the future.
Context
Third in the Procreation sequence (1–17). The 'uneared womb' is a farming metaphor — an unplowed field that should be fertile.
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