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.
Summary: Sonnet 94
The first eight lines of this very difficult sonnet are
devoted to the description of a certain kind of impressive, restrained
person: “They that have pow’r to hurt” and do not use that power.
These people seem not to do the thing they are most apparently able
to do—they “do not do the thing they most do show”—and while they may
move others, they remain themselves “as stone,” cold and slow to
feel temptation. People such as this, the speaker says, inherit
“heaven’s graces” and protect the riches of nature from expenditure.
They are “the lords and owners of their faces,” completely in control
of themselves, and others can only hope to steward a part of their
“excellence.”
The next four lines undergo a remarkable shift, as the
speaker turns from his description of those that “have pow’r to
hurt and will do none” to a look at a flower in the summer. He says
that the summer may treasure its flower (it is “to the summer sweet”)
even if the flower itself does not feel terribly cognizant of its
own importance (“to itself it only live and die”). But if the flower
becomes sick—if it meets with a “base infection”—then it becomes
more repulsive and less dignified than the “basest weed.” In the
couplet, the speaker observes that it is behavior that determines
the worth of a person or a thing: sweet things which behave badly turn
sour, just as a flower that festers smells worse than a weed.
Read a translation of
Sonnet 94 →
Commentary
Sonnet 94 is
one of the most difficult sonnets in the sequence, at least in terms
of the reader’s ability to know what exactly the speaker is talking
about. He jumps from an almost opaque description of these mysterious people
who “have pow’r to hurt and will do none” to an almost inexplicable
description of a flower in the summer. The two parts of the poem
seem almost unconnected. In order to understand them, both on their own
and in relation to one another, it is necessary to understand something
about the tradition out of which the first 126 sonnets
were written.
In Elizabethan England, it was very difficult for poets
to make money simply by writing and selling their poetry. Many writers
sought out aristocratic patrons, who supported them in return for
the prestige of having a poet at their beck and call. Very often,
poets courted their patrons, and ensured their places in their patrons’ good
graces, by writing fawning verses in praise of the patron’s beauty,
valor, power, and so on. The first 126 of
Shakespeare’s sonnets, while not exactly fawning praise aimed at
an infinitely higher-up aristocrat (the speaker often seems quite
intimate with the young man), do come from this tradition of patronage
and praise. The speaker’s lengthy invocations to the beloved’s beauty,
sweetness, and worth, and the occasional intimations of power differences
between him and his beloved (as in Sonnet 87,
where the speaker says that the young man is “too dear for my possessing”),
hint at this tradition. Certain other poems—such as the sequence from 82 to 86,
in which the speaker reacts to the presence of a rival poet competing
for his patron’s favors—express it outright. Sonnet 94 is
a reaction to the conditions of the speaker’s patronage.
An aristocrat was in no way obligated to treat the poet
he supported as an equal; in fact, his superiority was in some ways
the entire point of the exchange. The speaker, genuinely in love
with the young man, is forced to relate to him not as an equal,
but as an inferior. To him, the young man can often seem cold, distant,
and grave, and the speaker, who loves him, is forced to try to explain
this behavior in a way that will enable him to continue loving the
young man. The solution is to praise his very distance and reserve:
he is not only “unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow,” he is “the
lord and owner” of his face, and the inheritor of “heaven’s graces.”
But praise of this chilly detachment seems inadequate (after all,
the speaker’s tone seems to imply that he has been
hurt by the young man’s behavior, so how can he say that the young
man “will do none”?), so he makes his argument even more oblique
by turning to the metaphor of the flower.
The summer’s flower, like the cold aristocrats of the
first two quatrains, is beautiful only in and for itself; it has
no interest in the fact that the summer loves it, because “to itself
it only live and die.” Like the summer, the speaker hopes he can
love the young man simply for his beauty without expecting anything
in return. But he is forced to acknowledge that the young man is
not so neutral and inactive: he has committed hurtful
deeds, which act like a “base infection” in the flower to render
it lower than a weed. The couplet brilliantly brings the two parts
of the poem into full relation: the first line refers specifically
to the first part of the poem (“Sweetest things turn sourest by
their deeds”—as opposed to the perfect creatures who “do not do”
hurtful deeds), and the second half refers to the metaphor of the
flower (“Lilies that fester”—a sour deed—”smell far worse than weeds”).
