5

Those hours that with gentle work did fram

The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwel

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 checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,

Beauty o’er-snowed and bareness everywhere.

Then, were not summer’s distillation le

A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,

Beauty’s effect with beauty were beref

Nor it nor no remembrance what it was.

But flowers distilled, though they with winter meet

Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.