Shakespeare's Sonnets: VI

Many of the sonnets in the first section carry on with the idea that having children will preserve posterity and will make us live on even after we’re gone. 

Sonnet VI

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 thy self to breed another thee,

Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;

Ten times thy self 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.