The poet then returns to the beauty-as-treasure metaphor and proposes that the lending of treasure for profit-i.e., usury-is not forbidden by law when the borrower is happy with the bargain.

Sonnet 6 Continuing the argument from s. 5, the poet urges the young man to produce a child, and thus distill his own summerlike essence.

The beauty of the flowers and thereby the essence of summer are thus preserved. Even though summer inevitably dies, he argues, its flowers can be distilled into perfume.

Sonnet 5 In this first of two linked sonnets, the poet compares the young man to summer and its flowers, doomed to be destroyed by winter.

Here, the young man’s refusal to beget a child is likened to his spending inherited wealth on himself rather than investing it or sharing it generously.

Sonnet 4 The poet returns to the idea of beauty as treasure that should be invested for profit.

If the young man decides to die childless, all these faces and images die with him. Just as the young man’s mother sees her own youthful self reflected in the face of her son, so someday the young man should be able to look at his son’s face and see reflected his own youth. Sonnet 3 The poet urges the young man to reflect on his own image in a mirror.In the other, though still himself subject to the ravages of time, his child’s beauty will witness the father’s wise investment of this treasure. In the first, the young man will waste the uninvested treasure of his youthful beauty. Sonnet 2 The poet challenges the young man to imagine two different futures, one in which he dies childless, the other in which he leaves behind a son.The young man’s refusal to beget a child is therefore self-destructive and wasteful. Only if they reproduce themselves will their beauty survive. Sonnet 1 In this first of many sonnets about the briefness of human life, the poet reminds the young man that time and death will destroy even the fairest of living things.

Shakespeare sonnet 15