Sonnet 5

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 un-fair which fairly doth excel:

For never-resting Time leads summer on

To hideous winter and confounds him there,

Sap check’d with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,

Beauty o’er-snow’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,

Lose but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

The gentle morning that lights like a photo

And frames your lovely gaze, where every eye

Now dwells, will turn to evening, slow,

And overthrow that same beauty.

For time never tires, and summer gives way

To winter and leaves the green dumbstruck.

Frost traps sap, and the silkiest leaves drift away.

Beauty is snowed over, and the limbs are left naked.

Then, if summer’s juices have not been distilled,

Concentrated in liquid, and bottled in glass,

Beauty’s impact will, with beauty, be killed,

And the memory of it will pass.

But flowers distilled, though harassed by winter,

Will lose their appearance—not their center.