Sonnet 11

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Sonnet 11 in the 1609 Quarto
Q1 Q2 Q3 C As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow’st In one of thine, from that which thou departest; And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow’st Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest. Herein lives wisdom, beauty and increase; Without this, folly, age and cold decay: If all were minded so, the times should cease And threescore year would make the world away. Let those whom Nature hath not made for store, Harsh, featureless and rude, barrenly perish: Look, whom she best endow’d she gave the more; Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish: She carv’d thee for her seal, and meant thereby Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die. 4 8 12 14 —William Shakespeare

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As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow’st
In one of thine, from that which thou departest;
And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow’st
Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest.
Herein lives wisdom, beauty and increase;
Without this, folly, age and cold decay:
If all were minded so, the times should cease
And threescore year would make the world away.
Let those whom Nature hath not made for store,
Harsh, featureless and rude, barrenly perish:
Look, whom she best endow’d she gave the more;
Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish:
She carv’d thee for her seal, and meant thereby
Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.

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Sonnet 11 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a procreation sonnet within the 126 sonnets of the Fair Youth sequence, a grouping of Shakespeare's sonnets addressed to an unknown young man. While the order in which the sonnets were composed is undetermined (though it is mostly agreed that they were not written in the order in which modern readers know them), Sonnet 11 was first published in a collection, the Quarto, alongside Shakespeare's other sonnets in 1609.

In the sonnet, the speaker reasons that though the young man will age his beauty will never fade so long as he passes his beauty on to a child. The speaker insists it is nature's will that someone of his beauty should procreate and make a copy of himself, going so far as to comment on the foolish effects of ignoring the necessity and inevitability of such procreation upon both the youth and mankind.

Sonnet 11 is part of the first block of 17 sonnets in the Fair Youth sequence (sonnets 1–126) and describes Shakespeare's call for the preservation of the Youth's beauty through procreation. Shakespeare urges the Fair Youth to copulate with a woman in marriage and conceive a boy so that the child may inherit and preserve the beauty of the Fair Youth. For, Shakespeare reasons, in fathering a child, the Youth can keep himself in youth and tenderness, as he has created another copy of himself to attested to the loveliness he loses as he ages. Then in further manipulating the Youth to this idea, Shakespeare delves into what about the Fair Youth is worth preserving. Namely everything, as "Nature gave abundantly to those whom she endowed with the best qualities" (paraphrase, lines 11–12), flattering the Youth while showing his waste in not complying to "print more".