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Sonnet 54
Project Gutenberg eBook #1041, Shakespeare's Sonnets
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Source: Project Gutenberg eBook #1041, Shakespeare's Sonnets Source URL: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1041 Public domain basis: Complete text of the 154 sonnets. Public domain. Coverage: Complete individual poem extracted from parent edition shakespeares-sonnets at bytes 33565-34199; checksum 2a1086d590c83b85275d034f90e1720bf02609d754527ecc184a5e511384a2f5.
# Sonnet 54
Sonnet 54
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.