Sonnet 54
O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
beauty
truth
poetry
nature
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 fade, my verse distills your truth.
What It Means
Beauty is beautiful; but truth makes it more beautiful still. The sweetest roses are not the showiest — they have a fragrance that false flowers (dog roses) don't. The young man is like those true roses. Even when his beauty fades, the truth of what he is will be distilled into verse, just as perfume is distilled from petals. The poem preserves what the flower cannot.
Context
Part of the Fair Youth sequence. The rose/distillation metaphor echoes Sonnets 5–6 from the Procreation sequence.
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