Sonnet 94: They That Have Power to Hurt and Will Do None
Sonnet 94: They That Have Power to Hurt and Will Do None - form Summary
Volta Shifts to Moral Contrast
This is a Shakespearean sonnet structured in three quatrains and a closing couplet. The poem praises those who can harm but refrain, portraying self-command as noble and preserving. At the volta (line 9) the tone shifts to a moral contrast: beauty or virtue, when corrupted, becomes worse than baseness. The couplet delivers the generalizing warning that sweetest qualities, once spoiled, become fouler than weeds.
Read Complete AnalysesThey 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, Unmovèd, 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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