Sonnet 6
Then let not winter's ragged hand deface
procreation
legacy
mortality
self-love
Then let not winter's ragged hand deface
In thee thy summer, ere thou be distill'd:
Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place
With beauty's treasure, ere it be self-kill'd.
That use is not forbidden usury,
Which happies those that pay the willing loan;
That's for thyself to breed another thee,
Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;
Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,
If ten of thine ten times refigured thee:
Then what could death do, if thou shouldst depart,
Leaving thee living in posterity?
Be not self-will'd, for thou art much too fair
To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.
What It Means
Building directly on Sonnet 5, Shakespeare develops the distillation metaphor into a direct argument: make a 'sweet vial' of yourself before winter (old age) arrives. Fill it with children. The sonnet makes the argument explicit: ten children would be a better use of happiness than keeping all of it for oneself. 'Self-willed' is the accusation — the young man is stubborn in his solitude.
Context
Sixth in the Procreation sequence. It continues the logic of Sonnet 5's distillation image, which many scholars read as among the clearest expressions of Shakespeare's procreation argument.
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