Stop Wasting Your Youth, Young Man: Shakespeare’s Sonnet No. 1

Original

From fairest creatures we desire increase,

That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,

But as the riper should by time decease,

His tender heir might bear his memory;

But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,

Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,

Making a famine where abundance lies,

Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament

And only herald to the gaudy spring,

Within thine own bud buriest thy content,

And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding.

Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

From our young we desire children,

So, generation would follow generation.

We assume one will settle down and have children

But you! old already, in your youth

Wasting yourself on the making of money

Not making a home, not fathering children.

You are your own worst enemy!

Squandering time and energy you can’t get back.

There is so much potential in front of you

Yet you keep it to yourself by hustling for the green

You act like Ebenezer Scrooge

Shame on you for denying the rest of us your children