| O! HOW much more doth beauty beauteous seem | |
| By that sweet ornament which truth doth give! | |
| The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem | |
| For that sweet odour which doth in it live. | |
| The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye | 5 |
| As the perfumed tincture of the roses, | |
| Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly | |
| When summer’s breath their masked buds discloses: | |
| But, for their virtue only is their show, | |
| They live unwoo’d, and unrespected fade; | 10 |
| Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so; | |
| Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made: | |
| And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth, | |
| When that shall vade, by verse distils your truth. |