Poem-A-Day: Day 209

Sonnet #49 (Pet Shackles)

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
and scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye?
Though to itself, it only live and die;
nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,
and beauty's waste hath in the world an end.
The basest weed outbraves his dignity,
shall reasons find of settled gravity:
look what an unthrift in the world doth spend
for having traffic with thy self alone
that thou consum'st thy self in single life.
The world will wail thee like a makeless wife;
then how when nature calls thee to be gone?
  To leave poor me thou hast the strength of laws,
  Since why to love I can allege no cause.

Lines taken from Shakespeare's Sonnets: 4, 9, 49, and 94