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Poem by William Shakespeare


Sonnet 5. Those hours that with gentle work did frame


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 checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'er-snowed 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 distilled though they with winter meet,
Leese but their show, their substance still lives sweet.



William Shakespeare


William Shakespeare's other poems:
  1. The Church at Stratford
  2. Anne Hathaway
  3. Hark! Hark! The Lark
  4. It Was a Lover and His Lass
  5. Dirge of the Three Queens


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