Sonnet 54

William Shakespeare · 1609

Catalog grade guidance: 9–12 — English sonnet; dense metaphor—best with notes for younger high-school readers.

15 content lines · 115 words · Est. recitation about 1 min 4 sec (approx.)

Public-domain text for reading and recitation practice. Source: Project Gutenberg eBook #1041, Shakespeare's Sonnets.Estimated time uses ~120 words/minute plus short pauses—not a contest rule.

LIV

O! how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
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 perfumed tincture of the roses.
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly
When summer’s breath their masked buds discloses:
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo’d, and unrespected fade;
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 vade, by verse distills your truth.