Sonnet 6 claims that having children is the one kind of usury that is not forbidden, and that a young man who refuses to lend his beauty forward is writing a will that leaves everything to the worms.
Sonnet 6: Full Poem
Then let not winter’s ragged hand deface
In thee thy summer, ere thou be distilled:
Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place
With beauty’s treasure ere it be self-killed.
That use is not forbidden usury,
Which happies those that pay the willing loan;
That’s for thyself to breed another thee,
Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;
Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,
If ten of thine ten times refigured thee:
Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart,
Leaving thee living in posterity?
Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fair
To be death’s conquest and make worms thine heir.
Text from the 1609 Quarto, with spelling and punctuation lightly modernized.
At a Glance
Here are the key facts about Sonnet 6 for quick reference.
What Sonnet 6 Means
Sonnet 6 turns the general image of Sonnet 5 into a direct instruction, then backs it with arithmetic.
The first quatrain begins with “Then,” picking up where Sonnet 5 left off. Do not let winter’s ragged hand spoil the summer in you before you have been distilled. Fill some vial with sweetness, enrich some place, meaning a woman who will bear your child, with the treasure of your beauty, before that beauty destroys itself.
The second quatrain answers an objection before it is raised. Lending at interest was condemned as usury, but this kind of lending is not forbidden, because it makes happy the one who willingly repays the loan. The loan is for the young man to breed another self, and he would be ten times happier if the return were ten children for one.
The third quatrain follows the numbers. Ten times himself would make him ten times happier, if ten children each reproduced him ten times over. Then what could death do to him, if he died leaving himself alive in his descendants?
The couplet drops the calculation and rebukes him. Do not be stubborn: you are far too beautiful to be death’s prize and to make worms your heirs.
Sonnet 6 Line by Line
Each line, with the sense of it in plain English.
Themes
Sonnet 6 joins the two main images of the earlier Procreation Sonnets, distillation and moneylending, and its themes come from that combination.
Distillation Made Personal
Sonnet 5 described distillation in general, without addressing anyone. Sonnet 6 applies it to the young man: “ere thou be distilled.” The vial of perfume becomes a child, and the “place” to be treasured becomes a woman who will bear that child.
Lawful Usury
Sonnet 4 called the young man a “profitless usurer.” Sonnet 6 describes the profitable kind. Moneylending at interest was widely condemned in Shakespeare’s time, but this “use” is “not forbidden,” because both sides gain from it and the interest is a child.
Multiplying Against Death
Earlier sonnets imagined a single heir. Sonnet 6 imagines ten, each reproducing the young man ten times. The scale shifts from one family to a whole line of descendants, and against a line, death has nothing to take: “what could death do if thou shouldst depart, / Leaving thee living in posterity?”
Form and Language
Sonnet 6 is built on repetition and wordplay, and its central word appears five times in three lines.
Meter and Rhyme
The poem is a Shakespearean sonnet in iambic pentameter, rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The rhymes in the first quatrain, “distilled” and “self-killed,” pair the solution with the danger, and the couplet pairs “fair” with “heir.”
The Number Ten
“Ten” appears five times in lines 8 to 10: “ten times happier,” “ten for one,” “Ten times thyself,” “ten of thine ten times.” The repetition performs the multiplication the poem recommends, piling up copies until the lines themselves seem crowded with them.
“Treasure” Twice
Lines 3 and 4 use the same word as a verb and then as a noun: “treasure thou some place / With beauty’s treasure.” To treasure a place is to enrich it; the treasure is the young man’s beauty, and his seed. The repetition makes the gift and the giving one act.
“Worms Thine Heir”
An heir inherits an estate. The final line imagines the young man’s estate, his beauty, passing to the worms that will eat his body in the grave. It is the ugliest image in the Procreation Sonnets so far, and it is designed to be: the legal language of inheritance meets the plain fact of decay.
A Closer Reading
Sonnet 6 is framed by two words that begin with “self,” and between them they turn the young man’s refusal into a kind of suicide and a kind of will.
Line 4 warns that his beauty may be “self-killed.” Line 13 tells him not to be “self-willed.” The two words rhyme in sound as well as shape, and they describe the same act from two sides. To refuse a child is to kill the self the child would have carried, and to do it out of sheer stubbornness, the self’s insistence on its own way.
“Willed” carries a second meaning that the last line brings out. A will is also the legal document that names a man’s heirs, and the couplet ends with exactly that: “make worms thine heir.” A self-willed man, in this sense, has written a will in favor of himself alone, and since he cannot inherit from himself after death, the estate passes by default to whatever consumes his body.
The poem’s arithmetic is the alternative will. Ten children, each multiplying him ten times, would scatter his beauty so widely that death would have nothing left to claim. The choice the sonnet offers is between two documents: a will that leaves everything to posterity, and a will that leaves everything to worms. The young man, the speaker implies, is already drafting the second.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about Sonnet 6, answered briefly.
Who Is Sonnet 6 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 “That Use Is Not Forbidden Usury” Mean?
“Use” meant interest on a loan. The line says that this kind of interest, gaining a child from the “loan” of one’s beauty, is not the forbidden moneylending people condemned, because it benefits everyone involved.
What Does “Make Worms Thine Heir” Mean?
Leave the worms as your heirs. If the young man dies without children, the only thing to inherit his beauty will be the worms that consume his body in the grave.
What Does “Ere Thou Be Distilled” Mean?
Before your essence has been distilled, meaning before you have had a child. It picks up the image from Sonnet 5 of flowers distilled into perfume, which keeps their substance after the flowers die.
How Is Sonnet 6 Connected to Sonnets 4 and 5?
It completes both. From Sonnet 5 it takes distillation, and from Sonnet 4 it takes moneylending, joining them into a single instruction: be distilled in a child, and earn interest on your beauty.
Related Sonnets
Three sonnets frame Sonnet 6’s argument about distillation, interest, and heirs.