Number 54

So, I'll have to do some retroactive blogging, as I have some great pictures to accompany some equally "brilliant" experiences during this weekend in England with Ken & Lynn. But, due to some recent thought processes and circumstances and being able to meet the places where a longtime literary hero frequented and was born, I have been reminded of this favorite sonnet of his. Still resonates and I thought I'd share:

Sonnet 54
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.

-William Shakespeare

:)