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