Sonnet 9 claims that the young man’s excuse for staying single, sparing a future wife the pain of widowhood, is backward: if he dies childless, the whole world will be his widow, and it will have no children in whose eyes to remember him.
Sonnet 9: Full Poem
Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye
That thou consum’st thyself 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.
Text from the 1609 Quarto, with spelling and punctuation lightly modernized.
At a Glance
Here are the key facts about Sonnet 9 for quick reference.
What Sonnet 9 Means
Sonnet 9 takes the young man’s best excuse for staying single and turns it against him.
The first quatrain asks a question. Is it because you fear leaving a weeping widow that you are wasting yourself in single life? If so, think again: if you happen to die without children, the whole world will mourn you like a wife who has lost her mate.
The second quatrain develops the image. The world will be your widow and will go on weeping that you left no likeness of yourself behind, while any ordinary widow can at least keep her husband’s face in mind by looking into her children’s eyes.
The third quatrain turns to money. Whatever a spendthrift wastes only changes hands; the world still has it and enjoys it. But wasted beauty is gone from the world for good, and beauty that is kept unused is destroyed by the very person who owns it.
The couplet delivers the verdict. There is no love for others in the heart of a man who commits such murderous shame against himself.
Sonnet 9 Line by Line
Each line, with the sense of it in plain English.
Themes
Sonnet 9 widens the circle of people the young man wrongs, and its themes follow that widening.
The Excuse Turned Around
The poem opens by offering the young man a kind reason for staying single: he does not want to leave a wife in tears. It accepts that concern and shows that his choice produces exactly what he fears, only larger. He hoped to spare one widow; he will leave the whole world weeping.
Private Choice, Public Loss
The young man treats marriage as his own business. The poem insists that it is not: his beauty belongs to the world, and his death without children would be the world’s bereavement. Sonnet 1 said the same in one line, accusing him of eating “the world’s due.”
Beauty Is Not Money
The third quatrain makes a sharp distinction. Money wasted by a spendthrift is not destroyed; it only moves to someone else. Beauty cannot be handed over that way. It can only be passed on through children, or lost. So hoarding it, not spending it, is the true waste.
Form and Language
Sonnet 9 is built on one great personification and a turn into the language of money.
Meter and Rhyme
The poem is a Shakespearean sonnet in iambic pentameter, rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Lines 10 and 12 end with an extra unstressed syllable, “enjoys it” and “destroys it,” and the matched endings press the contrast between the two verbs.
The World as Widow
“The world will be thy widow” turns all of humanity into a single grieving wife. The personification makes an abstract loss feel personal, and it answers the young man’s excuse directly: the widow he feared to create is replaced by a far greater one.
“Unthrift” and “User”
An “unthrift” is a spendthrift, and a “user” is someone who puts a thing to use, though the word also recalls usury, the lending of money at interest. The young man is neither: he is an owner who refuses to use what he has, and so destroys it. The same money language runs through Sonnet 4 and Sonnet 6.
“Murd’rous Shame”
The couplet is the harshest ending in the Procreation Sonnets so far. Refusing to have children is no longer foolish or wasteful; it is a crime, a murder committed on himself. The next sonnet picks up the charge at once.
A Closer Reading
Sonnet 9 is built on two kinds of eyes, eyes that weep and eyes that remember, and the young man can only choose which one he leaves behind.
The poem opens with the first kind: “Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye.” The young man, it suggests, is avoiding marriage to spare a woman’s tears. Four lines later the second kind appears: every private widow can keep her husband’s shape in mind “By children’s eyes.” She weeps, but when she looks at her children, she sees him again.
Put side by side, the two phrases show what the young man has misunderstood. He thinks the choice is between a widow’s wet eyes and no grief at all. In fact, there will be grief either way; everyone dies. The real choice is whether that grief comes with consolation. A widow with children has both kinds of eyes: her own, wet with tears, and her children’s, carrying her husband’s face. The world he leaves childless has only the first.
That is why the couplet can call his restraint a lack of love. He believes he is being considerate by avoiding a wife’s sorrow. The poem answers that true consideration would leave the mourners something to look at. Love, in Sonnet 9, is not the refusal to cause grief. It is providing, in advance, the eyes that will make grief bearable.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about Sonnet 9, answered briefly.
Who Is Sonnet 9 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 “Is It for Fear to Wet a Widow’s Eye” Mean?
Is it because you are afraid of making a widow cry? The speaker suggests the young man avoids marriage so that no wife will be left grieving when he dies.
What Is a “Makeless Wife”?
A wife without her mate. “Make” was an old word for a partner or spouse, so a “makeless” wife is a widow. Line 4 says the world will mourn the young man as such a widow mourns her husband.
What Does “Shifts but His Place” Mean?
Only changes hands. Money a spendthrift wastes is not destroyed; it passes to someone else, and the world still has it. Beauty, the poem says, cannot be passed on that way.
How Is Sonnet 9 Connected to Sonnet 10?
Sonnet 9 ends by accusing the young man of “murd’rous shame” against himself. Sonnet 10 begins “For shame” and soon says he is “possessed with murderous hate,” taking up both words from the couplet.
Related Sonnets
Three sonnets frame Sonnet 9’s argument about grief and waste.