PARAPHRASE:

Look in your mirror and tell the face you see
That now is the time it should form another [create a child];
If you do not renew yourself,
You rob the world, and prevent some woman from becoming a mother.
For where is the woman whose unploughed womb
Would frown upon the way you plough your field?
Or who is he so foolish to love himself so much but let
Himself perish? [To make a tomb of self-love and not have a child to carry on his beauty?]
You are the mirror of your mother, and she is the mirror of you
And in you she recalls the lovely April of her youth:
So too will you see when you are old,
Free of wrinkles [now], these are your best years.
   But if you live your life avoiding being remembered.
   You will die childless, and your image will die with you.

TRADUZIONE:

Guarda nello specchio e dimmi che faccia tu vedi

Che ora è tempo in cui ne dovrebbe formare un altra;

Il tuo fresco riparo sè adesso tu non rinnuovi,

Tu ingannerai il mondo, e renderai una qualche madre non beata.

Chi è questa donna, così bella che potrebbe

Disdegnare un rapporto maritale con un uomo come te?

O chi è cosi affezionato a sè stesso

Da essere la tomba dei propri figli?

Tu sei lo specchio di tua madre, e lei è lo specchio di te

E in te lei si ricorda l'Aprile amorevole della sua giovinezza:

Così come tu la vedrai quando sarai vecchio,

Privo di rughe, questi sono i tuoi anni migliori.

Ma sè vivi la tua vita per evitare di essere ricordato,

Muorirai senza figli, e la tua immagine morirò con te.

In the first quatrain of the third sonett the speaking voice advices a young man to have children and bless a mother.

In the second quatrain, the speaking voice wonders what woman, too nice, would not like to be the wife of the young man and more what man likes so much himself that he will not have children in order to convey its beauty. In this quatrain, furthermore, the figure of the young man can be compared with the figure of Narcissus in Greek mythology.

In the third quatrain the mirror seems like a perpetual time door (the mother may see herself ever in the radiance of her beauty, "Calls back the lovely April of her prime time") while the child may get a glimpse into the future and see how it will become. However it shines throughout the third sonnet, a hymn to beauty only as a youth.

In the final couplet the author does nothing else as to point out the concept that beauty ends in itself, without an aim ( to give it to children) beauty is useless and ephemeral.