Sonnet 3: Look in Thy Glass and Tell the Face Thou Viewest
Sonnet 3: Look in Thy Glass and Tell the Face Thou Viewest - meaning Summary
Preserve Beauty Through Heirs
The poem addresses a young person, urging them to look in a mirror and recognize that their beauty should be passed on through offspring. It argues that by failing to reproduce they cheat the world and deny their mother renewed youth, effectively burying their image. The sonnet frames procreation as preservation against time: without descendants the speaker warns the young person will die unlamented and his likeness vanish.
Read Complete AnalysesLook in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest, Now is the time that face should form another, Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest, Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother. For where is she so fair whose uneared womb Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry? Or who is he so fond will be the tomb Of his self-love, to stop posterity? Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee Calls back the lovely April of her prime; So thou through windows of thine age shalt see, Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time. But if thou live rememb’red not to be, Die single, and thine image dies with thee.
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