#sonnet 5

Sonnet 5 by William Shakespeare (read by Alex Jennings)

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.

Sonnet 5 by William Shakespeare (read by Ossie Davis)

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 distilled, though they with winter meet,   Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

Sunday Sonnet – ‘Winter is Coming’

  https://videopress.com/embed/6sDAR5B9?hd=0&autoPlay=0&permalink=0&loop=0

Shakespeare’s Sonnet Number 5 is from early in the sequence of verses written to the Young Man.  The Poet is still trying to convince the Young Man to marry and reproduce, thereby preserving his beauty.  Here the Bard compares that beauty to the most lovely things of summer, flowers.  But flowers are transient. Winter…

Sonnet V

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 distilled, though they with winter meet,   Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

This and the following sonnet are written as a pair.

Those hours that with gentle work did frame The lovely gaze where every eye doth swell 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’ersnowed and bareness everywhere. There, were not summer’s distillation left A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass, Beauty’s effect with beauty were bereft, Nor it nor remembrance what it was. But flowers distilled, though they with winter meet, Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.