Philip Weller caricature
Philip and Weller hugging

Welcome to my web site, now under development for more than twenty years.   
-- Philip Weller, November 13, 1941 - February 1, 2021
Dr. Weller, an Eastern Washington University professor of English and Shakespearean scholar for more than 50 years.

Shakespeare's Sonnets Navigator Summary of Sonnet 54 in the Table of Contents Notes for Sonnet 54

Shakespeare's Sonnet 54

  1    O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
  2    By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
  3    The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
  4    For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
  5    The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye
  6    As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
  7    Hang on such thorns and play as wantonly
  8    When summer's breath their masked buds discloses.
  9    But, for their virtue only is their show,
 10    They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade,
 11    Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
 12    Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:
 13      And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
 14      When that shall fade, my verse distills your truth.

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