Sonnet 4
by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE ((1564-1616)
Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thyself thy beauty’s legacy?
Nature’s bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,
And being frank she lends to those are free:
Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse
The bounteous largess given thee to give?
Profitless usurer, why dost thou use
So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?
For having traffic with thy self alone,
Thou of thy self thy sweet self dost deceive:
Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable audit canst thou leave?
Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,
Which, used, lives th’ executor to be.
![]() In the 1860s, German author Diedrich Barnstorff seemed to think that Shakespeare was talking to himself: “How like the monologue of Hamlet! That which the favour of nature has planted in us is not there to be buried and unemployed — hoarded like a miser’s treasure. It is, as a germ, to amalgamate with other parts; it is to step forth into the world by means of the form which it obtains therein, and prove its beauty by deeds….” A Key to Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1868) |
Recent Comments