Sonnet V

William Shakespeare

     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 cheque'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.

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