Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/233

 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

165 (xi)

THEY that have power to hurt and will do none, That do not do the thing they most do show, Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow They rightly do inherit Heaven's graces, And husband Nature's riches from expense; They are the Lords and owners of their faces, Others, but stewards of their excellence. The Summer's flower is to the Summer sweet, Though to itself it only live and die; But if that flower with base infection meet, The basest weed outbraves his dignity.

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

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��166 (xii)

"OW like a Winter hath my absence been

From thce, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen, What old December's bareness everywhere ' And yet this time removed was summer's time; The teeming Autumn, big with rich increase, Bearing the wanton burden of the prime Like widow'd wombs after their Lord's decease: Yet this abundant issue secm'd to me But hope of orphans and unfather'd fruit; For Summer and his pleasures wait on thee, And, thou away, the very birds are mute: Or if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer That leaves look pale, dreading the Winter 's near.

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