English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
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| 125. Ninety-fourth Sonnet |
| | | William Shakespeare (1564–1616) |
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| THEY that have power to hurt, and will do none, | |
| That do not do the thing they most do show, | |
| Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, | |
| Unmovèd, cold, and to temptation slow,— | |
| They rightly do inherit Heaven’s graces, | 5 |
| And husband nature’s riches from expense; | |
| They are the lords and owners of their faces, | |
| Others, but stewards of their excellence. | |
| The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet, | |
| Though to itself it only live and die; | 10 |
| But if that flower with base infection meet, | |
| The basest weed outbraves his dignity: | |
| For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; | |
| Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. | |
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