The first seventeen poems of Shakespeare's sonnets express the speaker's unqualified love for a young man whose youthful beauty is praised in exquisite lyrics. In these opening pieces, the speaker (or poet) entreats his friend to marry and to have children so that his extraordinary beauty will be perpetuated. Starting with the famous Sonnet 18, the poet begins to speak of the corrosive effects of time upon youthful beauty and of his beloved's need to have his beauty immortalized in the poet's own verse. At this juncture in the cycle, several of the sonnets imply that the poet's beloved has either left him for another or that the poet's affection has not been returned by the young man. It is of (possible) significance that in Sonnet 40 et seq. the young man is accused of having stolen the poet's own (and presumably female) lover, who may be the Dark Lady of Sonnets 127 through 154.