Shakespeare’s Sonnet 2: A Reflection on Beauty and Legacy

In Sonnet 2, Shakespeare warns the young man that he will soon lose his beauty. Time, symbolized by forty winters, will leave his face looking like a plowed field, marked and aged. When this happens, he will be ashamed of how his looks have faded and will no longer be able to hold onto the admiration he once received.

The speaker suggests that the only way to preserve his beauty and justify his future wrinkles is by having a child. If he passes his beauty on to a child, he will have a valid excuse for his aging appearance. More than that, it will feel like he has been reborn, his youth living on through another.