Saturday, October 27. 2007
Sonnet 54
O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem | By that sweet ornament which truth doth give! | The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem | For that sweet odour which doth in it live. | The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye | As the perfumed tincture of the roses, | Hang on such thorns and play as wantonly | When summer's breath their masked buds discloses: | But, for their virtue only is their show, | They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade, | Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so; | Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made: | And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth, | When that shall fade, my verse distills your truth. |
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