5. Those hours, that with gentle work did frame

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.

--

Read by Sir John Gielgud