Sonnet 9
Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye
mortality
beauty
community
legacy
Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye
That thou consumest thyself 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 children's eyes her husband's shape in mind.
Look, what an unthrift in the world doth spend
Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;
But beauty's 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 murderous shame commits.
What It Means
Shakespeare anticipates the young man's objection: you don't want to leave behind a grieving widow when you die. But that reasoning fails. Staying childless doesn't spare anyone grief — it just shifts it to the world at large, which mourns the waste of beauty. The sonnet calls the young man a 'beauteous niggard' — a beautiful miser. The key line: 'The world will wail thee like a makeless wife.' Your death without an heir is a loss everyone feels.
Context
Ninth in the Procreation sequence. Shakespeare addresses a possible counter-argument — that marriage would be selfish because it risks leaving a widow.
Buy the Arden edition of the Sonnets on Amazon →
As an Amazon Associate, ShakespeareGo earns from qualifying purchases.