English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
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| 114. Fifty-fourth Sonnet |
| | | William Shakespeare (1564–1616) |
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| 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 | 5 |
| As the perfumèd tincture of the Roses, | |
| Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly | |
| When summer’s breath their maskèd buds discloses; | |
| But—for their virtue only is their show— | |
| They live unwoo’d and unrespected fade, | 10 |
| 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 distils your truth. | |
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