Sonnet 11 claims that the young man is Nature’s seal, carved to stamp out copies of her finest work, and that by refusing to have a child he wastes a gift that was given to him to be used, not kept.
Sonnet 11: Full Poem
As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow’st
In one of thine, from that which thou departest;
And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow’st
Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest.
Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase;
Without this, folly, age, and cold decay:
If all were minded so, the times should cease,
And threescore year would make the world away.
Let those whom Nature hath not made for store,
Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish:
Look, whom she best endowed she gave the more;
Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish:
She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby
Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.
Text from the 1609 Quarto, with spelling and punctuation lightly modernized. Line 11 follows the Quarto’s “the more”; many editions change it to “thee more.”
At a Glance
Here are the key facts about Sonnet 11 for quick reference.
What Sonnet 11 Means
Sonnet 11 makes the case for having a child as a matter of simple arithmetic, then of the world’s survival, and finally of Nature’s own design.
The first quatrain offers a bargain. As fast as the young man declines with age, he will grow again just as fast in a child of his own, who comes from the youth he is leaving behind. The fresh blood he gives to a child while he is young, he will still be able to call his own when he himself is no longer young.
The second quatrain widens the view. Having children is where wisdom, beauty, and increase are found; refusing is folly, age, and cold decay. If everyone thought as the young man does, the generations would stop, and within sixty years, one human lifetime, the world would be empty.
The third quatrain turns harsh. Let those whom Nature did not make to be kept for breeding, the coarse, the plain, and the rough, die without children. But look: to those Nature gifted best, she gave still more. The young man should honor that generous gift by being generous with it in turn.
The couplet names what he is. Nature carved him as her seal, the stamp used to press an image into wax, and she meant him to print more copies, not to let the original die with him.
Sonnet 11 Line by Line
Each line, with the sense of it in plain English.
Themes
Sonnet 11 gathers arguments the Procreation Sonnets have made before and adds a new one: that beauty is something Nature hands out on purpose.
Growing While Declining
The opening line sets waning against growing, like the moon, and promises that the two can happen at once. The young man’s loss of youth becomes a child’s gain, and the blood he gives away remains his. Aging, in this account, is not a loss but a transfer, so long as someone is there to receive it.
The Survival of the World
Lines 7 and 8 raise the stakes from one family to all of humanity: if everyone refused to have children, “threescore year would make the world away.” The argument echoes Sonnet 1, which accused the young man of eating “the world’s due.” Here the charge is sharper. His choice, made universal, would end the human race in a single lifetime.
Beauty as a Gift to Be Used
The third quatrain treats beauty as something Nature distributes unequally and deliberately. Those she favors, she favors more, and the favored are expected to return the gift. The idea recalls the biblical parable of the talents, in which those given more are expected to make more of it, and it builds on Sonnet 4, where “Nature’s bequest gives nothing but doth lend.” The young man’s beauty is not his to keep.
Form and Language
Sonnet 11 moves from bookkeeping to breeding to printing, and its language changes with each step.
Meter and Rhyme
The poem is a Shakespearean sonnet in iambic pentameter, rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Two rhymes in the first quatrain, “departest” and “convertest,” end on an extra unstressed syllable, and line 10, “Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish,” crowds its stresses together so that the rhythm itself sounds rough, fitting the people it describes.
Wane and Grow
“Wane” is the word for a shrinking moon, and the first line pairs it with “grow’st,” as the moon grows again after waning. The image turns the young man’s life into a cycle rather than a straight line to the grave, but only if a child completes it.
Two Lists
Lines 5 and 6 set two lists of three against each other: “wisdom, beauty, and increase” and “folly, age, and cold decay.” Each word in the first list has its opposite in the second, and the balance makes the choice look as clear as a ledger. Line 10 adds a third list, “Harsh, featureless, and rude,” describing those Nature did not favor.
The Seal and the Copy
A seal was a carved stamp pressed into hot wax to mark a document with its owner’s image. By calling the young man Nature’s seal, the couplet makes him the carved original, and his children the impressions. “Copy” in Shakespeare’s time could mean the master pattern that copies are made from, and that is its sense here: the young man is the copy, and it must not die.
A Closer Reading
Sonnet 11 ends with an image of printing, and in doing so it points, without knowing it, to the answer the Procreation Sonnets will finally reach.
For ten sonnets, the speaker has argued that the young man can survive only through a child. Sonnet 11 repeats that argument, but its closing metaphor is not about children at all. It is about stamping an image: “She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby / Thou shouldst print more.” A seal makes identical impressions of one original. That is closer to what a printing press does than to what parents do, since children are never exact copies.
The sequence soon takes up the hint. In Sonnet 15, the speaker begins to preserve the young man himself, in verse. Sonnet 17 offers both paths at once, saying he should live twice, in a child and in the poet’s rhyme. By Sonnet 18, the child has dropped out of the argument entirely, and the poem alone will give him life.
Sonnet 11 also shows why that shift might be welcome. Its third quatrain is the harshest passage in the Procreation Sonnets. It tells the plain and coarse to “barrenly perish,” sorting people into those worth reproducing and those not, a line most modern readers find hard to read. The printing image offers a way out of that logic. A poem does not need a wife, a family line, or Nature’s approval. It only needs to be copied. The speaker who asks the young man to “print more” is describing, a few sonnets early, the kind of survival he himself can provide, and the book these sonnets were printed in, in 1609, is the proof.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about Sonnet 11, answered briefly.
Who Is Sonnet 11 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 “She Carved Thee for Her Seal” Mean?
Nature made the young man as her seal, the carved stamp used to press an image into wax. A seal exists to make impressions, so the line means he was made to produce children who carry his likeness.
What Does “Let Those Whom Nature Hath Not Made for Store” Mean?
Let those whom Nature did not make to be kept for breeding, the plain and coarse, die without children. “Store” means a stock kept in reserve. It is the harshest line in the Procreation Sonnets, and it shows how far the speaker will go to flatter the young man.
Is Line 11 “She Gave the More” or “She Gave Thee More”?
The 1609 Quarto reads “the more,” meaning Nature gave still more to those she had already gifted. Many editors change it to “thee more,” meaning she gave the young man more. Both readings make sense, and the Quarto’s is used here.
How Does Sonnet 11 Fit into the Procreation Sonnets?
It comes late in the group of seventeen, after Sonnet 10 first asks the young man to have a child “for love of me,” and before Sonnet 12 counts the clock. Its printing image looks ahead to the later sonnets, where verse replaces children as the way to preserve him.
Related Sonnets
Three sonnets frame Sonnet 11’s argument about gifts, time, and copies.