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Sonnet V
Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
1
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
2
Will play the tyrants to the very same
3
And that unfair which fairly doth excel:
4
For never-resting time leads summer on
5
To hideous winter and confounds him there;
6
Sap cheque'd with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
7
Beauty o'ersnow'd and bareness every where:
8
Then, were not summer's distillation left,
9
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
10
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
11
Nor it nor no remembrance what it was:
12
But flowers distill'd though they with winter meet,
13
Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.
14