Sonnet 5

Those hours, that with gentle work did frameThe lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,Will play the tyrants to the very sameAnd that unfair which fairly doth excel; 4For never-resting time leads summer onTo hideous winter, and confounds him there;Sap check'd with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,Beauty o'ersnow'd and bareness everywhere: 8Then, 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: 12But flowers distill'd, though they with winter meet,Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

2 gaze: object of sight, sight4 unfair: deprive of beautyfairly: in beauty6 confounds: destroys9, 10 Cf. n.12 it: would it remain14 Leese: lose