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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