English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.
William Shakespeare
114. Fifty-fourth Sonnet
O
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
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—
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.