The first eight lines of this very difficult sonnet are devoted to the description of a certain kind of impressive, restrained person: “They that have pow’r to hurt” and do not use that power. These people seem not to do the thing they are most apparently able to do—they “do not do the thing they most do show”—and while they may move others, they remain themselves “as stone,” cold and slow to feel temptation. People such as this, the speaker says, inherit “heaven’s graces” and protect the riches of nature from expenditure. They are “the lords and owners of their faces,” completely in control of themselves, and others can only hope to steward a part of their “excellence.”
The next four lines undergo a remarkable shift, as the speaker turns from his description of those that “have pow’r to hurt and will do none” to a look at a flower in the summer. He says that the summer may treasure its flower (it is “to the summer sweet”) even if the flower itself does not feel terribly cognizant of its own importance (“to itself it only live and die”). But if the flower becomes sick—if it meets with a “base infection”—then it becomes more repulsive and less dignified than the “basest weed.” In the couplet, the speaker observes that it is behavior that determines the worth of a person or a thing: sweet things which behave badly turn sour, just as a flower that festers smells worse than a weed.
The first eight lines of this very difficult sonnet are devoted to the description of a certain kind of impressive, restrained person: “They that have pow’r to hurt” and do not use that power. These people seem not to do the thing they are most apparently able to do—they “do not do the thing they most do show”—and while they may move others, they remain themselves “as stone,” cold and slow to feel temptation. People such as this, the speaker says, inherit “heaven’s graces” and protect the riches of nature from expenditure. They are “the lords and owners of their faces,” completely in control of themselves, and others can only hope to steward a part of their “excellence.”The next four lines undergo a remarkable shift, as the speaker turns from his description of those that “have pow’r to hurt and will do none” to a look at a flower in the summer. He says that the summer may treasure its flower (it is “to the summer sweet”) even if the flower itself does not feel terribly cognizant of its own importance (“to itself it only live and die”). But if the flower becomes sick—if it meets with a “base infection”—then it becomes more repulsive and less dignified than the “basest weed.” In the couplet, the speaker observes that it is behavior that determines the worth of a person or a thing: sweet things which behave badly turn sour, just as a flower that festers smells worse than a weed.
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