Shakespeare's Sonnets Navigator Summary of Sonnet 94 in the Table of Contents Notes for Sonnet 94

Shakespeare's Sonnet 94


  1    They that have pow'r to hurt and will do none,
  2    That do not do the thing they most do show,
  3    Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
  4    Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow,
  5    They rightly do inherit heaven's graces
  6    And husband nature's riches from expense;
  7    They are the lords and owners of their faces,
  8    Others but stewards of their excellence.
  9    The summer's flow'r is to the summer sweet,
 10    Though to itself it only live and die,
 11    But if that flow'r with base infection meet,
 12    The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
 13      For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
 14      Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

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