Public Domain Project: Sonnet Nine - Is It For Fear To Wet A Widow's Eye

William Shakespeare’s Sonnet Nine (Is It For Fear To Wet A Widow’s Eye) is the 9th of his 154 sonnets published in 1609. This is also the Ninth of the “Fair Youth” sonnets, in which an unnamed man is being addressed by the speaker. In addition to that, it’s the Ninth of the “procreation sonnets” where he feels compelled to convince the fair youth he’s addressing to get out there and get busy with procreation. Shakespeare conjects that it is perhaps fear of leaving a widow that is preventing the fair youth from marrying. To this, though, he replies that these worries are unfounded, particularly if he father a child. The logic is that, if he indeed did marry and father a child, the widow would still have part of him in her life through their child. If, however, he died young without a wife and child, he would make the whole of the world into his widow. The world at large would no longer be able to enjoy his existence in any way and his potential bride would never know him as a husband.

William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 9 Full Poem Text

Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye,
That thou consum'st thy self in single life?
Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die,
The world will wail thee like a makeless wife;
The world will be thy widow and still weep
That thou no form of thee hast left behind,
When every private widow well may keep
By children's eyes, her husband's shape in mind:
Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend
Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;
But beauty's waste hath in the world an end,
And kept unused the user so destroys it.
   No love toward others in that bosom sits
   That on himself such murd'rous shame commits.