- 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
- 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;
- 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 distills your truth.