Sonnet 5: Those Hours that with Gentle Work Did Frame

V

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 check'd with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,

Beauty o'ersnow'd, 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.

William Shakespeare

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