Sonnet 6

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Sonnet 6 in the 1609 Quarto
Q1 Q2 Q3 C 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 refigur’d 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. 4 8 12 14 —William Shakespeare

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C

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 refigur’d 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.

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Sonnet 6 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a procreation sonnet within the Fair Youth sequence. The sonnet continues Sonnet 5, thus forming a diptych. It also contains the same distillatory trope featured in Sonnet 54, Sonnet 74 and Sonnet 119.

Sonnet 6 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet, constructed of three quatrains followed by a couplet, all in iambic pentameter, with the typical rhyme scheme of the English sonnet, abab cdcd efef gg. Most of the poem exemplifies the regular metrical alternation characteristic of iambic pentameter, as can be seen in the couplet:

However, both these lines allow an alternative scansion, which may highlight a parallelism between "self-willed" and "death's conquest":

The opening line of this sonnet leads directly from the end of Sonnet 5, as though the two poems were intended as one, itself perhaps a reference to the idea of pairing through marriage that shapes the first 17 sonnets. The first line, “Then let not winters wragged hand deface,” also parallels Sonnet 64’s opening, “When I haue seene by times fell hand defaced.”