1. Those hours that with gentle work did frame,

2. The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell

3. Will play the tyrants to the very same,

4. And that unfair which fairly doth excel:

5. For never-resting time leads summer on

6. To hideous winter and confounds him there,

7. Sap check'd with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,

8. Beauty o'ersnow'd and bareness every where.

9. Then, were not summer's distillation left,

10. A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,

11. Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,

12. Nor it nor no remembrance what it was.

13. But flowers distill'd though they with winter meet.

14. Leese but their show, their substance still lives sweet.

Their Substance Still Lives Sweet

Dedication: To Elizabeth

Another comparison of Henry trapped in the vial as a perfume who unused and a “liquid prisoner” will only result in a bleak winter and bareness.

1^st Quatrain: (1-4)

Explaining to her that her portrait so gazed on and admired now will be looked on as a usurper of the sovereignty by not providing an heir in lines 1 - 3. Alluding to Henry as that "unfair" which if he were treated "fairly" would excel and provide this continuation.

2^nd Quatrain: (5-8)

Alluding to the future with Henry still unrecognized and her gone telling her that Time will make a barren winter landscape.

3rd Quatrain: (9-12)

However "with summers distallation left" (that vial with Henry in it) that "liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass" in lines 9 and 10. Line 11 likely that Henry as Beauty has had no effect on Elizabeth the other beauty.

couplet (13-14),

A reflection of Henry contained in the vial and still as potent as ever.

Commentary:

The poem starts out likely referring to time spent by Elizabeth sitting for a portrait for the purpose of reminding her of her metaphorical portrait Henry. Part of the very last efforts to communicate that Henry has very much the substance necessary to fulfill his role as heir even if it has never been apparent and visible to people. It also explains how he has been the equivalent of the metaphor of a “liquid prisoner in walls of glass”. And the flower reference is all important because it has hopefully it should be apparent always been a representation of Henry as it was in “Venus and Adonis”.