William Shakespeare, Sonnet v
These hours that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same,
4
And that unfair which fairly doth excel; [*]
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter, and confounds him there;
Sap check'd with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,
8
Beauty o'ersnow'd , and bareness everywhere:
Then, were not summer's distillation left,
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
12
Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was.
But flowers distill'd , though they with winter meet,
Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet. [*]
Notes
line 4: Unfair: verb, deprive of fairness, of beauty [ Back to text ]
line 14: Leese: lose [ Back to text ]
Most notes to Shakespeare's sonnets are from Charles Knight's edition, but those in square brackets are mine.