"Lilies That Fester Smell Far Worse Than Weeds"
Context: Those people who have within themselves potential greatness or goodness, says the poet, yet who do not excel, are far worse than those with less promise. The final six lines of the sonnet make clear the superiority of a simple, untainted flower or of a simple, untainted person to an infected blossom or a great person, soured by vile deeds, or as the poet states in the closing couplet, decayed lilies smell worse than decayed weeds:
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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