Sonnet 3 claims that the young man’s beauty was passed down to him by his mother, and that if he dies without a child, the face he sees in the mirror dies with him.
Sonnet 3: Full Poem
Look 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, remembered not to be,
Die single, and thine image dies with thee.
Text from the 1609 Quarto, with spelling and punctuation lightly modernized.
At a Glance
Here are the key facts about Sonnet 3 for quick reference.
What Sonnet 3 Means
Sonnet 3 puts the young man in front of a mirror and uses what he sees there to argue that he should have a child.
The first quatrain is an instruction. Look in your mirror, the speaker says, and tell that face it is time to make another like it. If you do not renew your youthful looks in a child, you cheat the world and deny some woman the blessing of becoming a mother.
The second quatrain asks two questions that expect the answer “nobody.” What woman is so beautiful that she would refuse to bear your child? And what man is so foolish that he would let his love of himself become a tomb, burying his line with him?
The third quatrain changes tone. The young man is his mother’s mirror: when she looks at him, she sees the April of her own youth again. In the same way, if he has a child, he will look out through the windows of old age and, despite his wrinkles, see his own golden time in that child.
The couplet closes the argument plainly. If you choose to live in a way that leaves no one to remember you, die single, and your image will die with you.
Sonnet 3 Line by Line
Each line, with the sense of it in plain English.
Themes
Sonnet 3 adds a new element to the Procreation Sonnets, the young man’s mother, and its themes grow out of that addition.
The Mirror and Self-Regard
The poem opens with the young man looking at himself, the same self-absorption that Sonnet 1 criticized. But the speaker does not tell him to stop looking. He tells him to talk to the face in the glass and read a message in it: it is time to make another. The mirror becomes a tool of persuasion. The young man’s vanity is not rejected but redirected.
Beauty as an Inheritance
Sonnet 3 is the first poem in the sequence to mention the young man’s mother, and her appearance changes the argument. His beauty did not begin with him; it came from her, and she still sees her own youth in his face. That makes beauty a relay rather than a possession. It was handed to him, and he is being asked to hand it on.
Self-Love as a Tomb
Line 7 asks who would be “the tomb / Of his self-love, to stop posterity.” The image is stark: a man who loves only himself becomes the grave in which his whole line is buried. The couplet completes the thought. If he dies single, his “image,” the face he sees in the mirror and the face his mother sees in him, dies too.
Form and Language
Sonnet 3 is built around one image, the glass, and uses farming language and seasonal imagery to widen it into an argument about generations.
Meter and Rhyme
The poem is a Shakespearean sonnet in iambic pentameter, rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The first quatrain is unusual: all four lines end with an extra unstressed syllable, “viewest,” “another,” “renewest,” “mother.” These are called feminine endings, and four in a row give the opening a soft, trailing sound before the harder, one-syllable rhymes of the second quatrain (“womb,” “tomb”).
The Glass
“Glass” means mirror, and the poem uses it twice. In line 1 it is an object: the young man’s looking glass. In line 9 it is a person: the young man himself, in whom his mother sees her reflection. Line 11 adds a third kind of glass, the “windows” of old age, which the eye looks through rather than into. The poem’s argument moves along with the image.
Farming Language
“Uneared womb” and “the tillage of thy husbandry” describe conception in the language of agriculture. An “uneared” field is one that has not been plowed, “tillage” is cultivation, and “husbandry” means both farming and the duties of a husband. The pun on “husbandry” folds marriage into the metaphor: to farm is to marry, and to leave the field unplowed is to stay single.
“The Lovely April of Her Prime”
The mother’s youth is called her “April,” the early spring of her life rather than its full summer. When she looks at her son, she “calls back” that season, summoning it into view. The phrase answers the poem’s later “golden time”: the mother’s April is what the young man now carries, and his golden time is what a child would carry for him.
The Couplet’s “Die Single”
After the warmth of the third quatrain, the couplet is flat and unornamented. “Single” means unmarried, but it also means alone and just one, with no copy. The last word of the poem, “thee,” leaves the young man exactly where the first line found him: by himself, facing his own image.
A Closer Reading
Sonnet 3 tries to turn a mirror into a window.
A mirror shows you yourself. A window shows you someone else. The poem begins with the first kind of glass, the young man’s looking glass, and it does not ask him to put it down. Instead it asks him to follow what he sees there to its conclusion. The face in the mirror, the speaker says, should “form another.” Self-regard, taken seriously, points past the self.
The third quatrain shows how that works. The young man is “thy mother’s glass”: to her, he is a mirror that shows not her present face but her April. She sees herself by looking at someone else. That is the change the poem wants him to make. In old age he will look “through windows,” and what he sees through them will not be his own reflection but his “golden time” living in a child. The windows of line 11 are the mirror of line 1 made transparent.
The couplet shows what happens if he refuses. “Thine image dies with thee.” Without a child, the only image of him left is the one in the looking glass, and a reflection lasts exactly as long as the person standing in front of it. The mirror that opened the poem turns out to be the weakest form of survival there is.
This is why Sonnet 3 persuades more gently than Sonnet 1. It does not ask the young man to stop loving himself. It shows him that his mother loved herself in exactly the way the poem recommends, by seeing her beauty in someone else, and that he is the proof.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about Sonnet 3, answered briefly.
Who Is Sonnet 3 Addressed To?
The young man of the Fair Youth sonnets, the same unnamed figure the Procreation Sonnets urge to marry and have children.
What Does “Thou Art Thy Mother’s Glass” Mean?
You are your mother’s mirror. When she looks at her son, she sees her own youthful beauty reflected in him, the “lovely April of her prime.”
What Does “Uneared Womb” Mean?
An unplowed womb. “Ear” was an old verb meaning to plow, so the phrase pictures a woman who has not yet had children as a field not yet cultivated.
What Does “Fond” Mean in Sonnet 3?
Foolish. In Shakespeare’s English “fond” usually meant foolish or infatuated, not affectionate, so line 7 asks what man would be foolish enough to become the tomb of his own self-love.
What Is New in Sonnet 3 Compared to Sonnets 1 and 2?
The mother. Sonnets 1 and 2 look forward to what the young man will lose. Sonnet 3 is the first to look back, to the parent whose beauty he inherited, and to argue from his own existence that passing beauty on is possible.
Related Sonnets
Three sonnets frame Sonnet 3’s argument about looking, aging and inheritance.