Sonnet 13

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O! that you were your self; but, love, you are No longer yours, than you your self here live: Against this coming end you should prepare, And your sweet semblance to some other give: So should that beauty which you hold in lease Find no determination; then you were Yourself again, after yourself's decease, When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear. Who lets so fair a house fall to decay, Which husbandry in honour might uphold, Against the stormy gusts of winter's day And barren rage of death's eternal cold? O! none but unthrifts. Dear my love, you know, You had a father: let your son say so.
–William Shakespeare

Sonnet 13 is the first of Shakespeare's procreation sonnets to contain a declaration of love. Throughout this sonnet are descriptions of the winter and the death in nature that this brings. The winter images captured in Sonnet 5 and Sonnet 6 reappear in this sonnet.

Interpretation and meaning

The first line "O! that you were your self;" means that Shakespeare wants the man he is describing to remain as he is, unchanged, not aging. The sonnet is quite philosophical in that it asks how can a person have an identity if he is constantly changing?

The third line of this sonnet "Against this coming end you should prepare" has a connotation of the Day of Jud o have children. The two lines below describe how a person's essence can be captured in their children and that by having children they would resemble their father.

Yourself again, after yourself's decease

When your sweet issue your sweet form

References

• Alden, Raymond (1916). The Sonnets of Shakespeare, with Variorum Reading and Commentary. Houghton-Mifflin, Boston.
• Baldwin, T. W. (1950). On the Literary Genetics of Shakspeare's Sonnets. University of Illinois Press, Urbana.
• Booth, Stephen (1977). Shakespeare's Sonnets. Yale University Press, New Haven.
• Dowden, Edward (1881). Shakespeare's Sonnets. London.
• Hubler, Edwin (1952). The Sense of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Princeton University Press, Princeton.
• Schoenfeldt, Michael (2007). The Sonnets: The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s Poetry. Patrick Cheney, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
• Tyler, Thomas (1989). Shakespeare’s Sonnets. London D. Nutt.
• Vendler, Helen (1997). The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

External links

• Paraphrase of sonnet in modern language
• Analysis of sonnet 13