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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’st 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, makest waste in niggarding. /
Pity the world, or else this glutton be, /
To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.
What is a Shakespearean Sonnet