William Shakespeare
Sonnet 94
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.
William Shakespeare was the author of 38 plays and 154 sonnets as well as the poems Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594). The Sonnets of Shakespeare was published in 1609. A complete collection of his plays, known as the First Folio, was published in 1623.