Sonnet 1

From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty's rose might never die, But as the riper should by time decease, His tender heir might bear his memory: But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feed'st thy light'st flame with self-substantial fuel, Making a famine where abundance lies, Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel. Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament And only herald to the gaudy spring, Within thine own bud buriest thy content And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding. Pity the world, or else this glutton be, To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

This sonnet was basiclly saying how everyone loves the worlds beauties, so we try to hold on to them as long as we can. The speaker was also saying how beauty will never die as long as we reproduce.
In the next few quardirns the speaker turns his attention to a human example. Where a man refueses to have children. He says how the guy is the beauty of the world now. But as time goes on he will become his own worst enemy, by dieing with out passing on his beauty.