English poem
Sonnet 5: Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
Those hours, that with gentle work did frame The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell, Will play the tyrants to the very same And that unfair which fairly doth excel; For never-resting time leads summer on To hideous winter, and confounds him there; Sap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone, Beauty o'er-snowed and bareness every where: Then were not summer's distillation left, A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass, Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft, 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.
More by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 56: Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said
- Sonnet 57: Being your slave what should I do but tend
- Sonnet 58: That god forbid, that made me first your slave
- Sonnet 59: If there be nothing new, but that which is
- Sonnet 60: Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore
- Sonnet 61: Is it thy will, thy image should keep open
- Sonnet 62: Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye
- Sonnet 63: Against my love shall be as I am now