Public Domain Project: Sonnet Five - Those Hours, That With Gentle Work Did Frame

William Shakespeare’s Sonnet Five (Those Hours, That With Gentle Work Did Frame) is the 5th of his 154 sonnets published in 1609. This is also the Fifth of the “Fair Youth” sonnets, in which an unnamed man is being addressed by the speaker. In addition to that, it’s the Fifth of the “procreation sonnets” where he feels compelled to convince the fair youth he’s addressing to get out there and get busy with procreation. Though this poem is considered to be in the procreation series of sonnets, it isn’t quite as explicit about the concept of having children as the preceding 4 sonnets. Still, though, the overall message of the poem is thematically similar. The passing seasons are used as a metaphor to describe the fair youth’s life. The coming winter can be viewed as the youth’s old age. A time when the passage of years removes all of the pleasant features of the young man’s life and he will find himself in a cold, bleak existence, much like the winter covers the life abounding in the summer. The reference to carrying on through children can be found in the final couplet. Perfume distilled from flowers reminds us of the flower that once lived and that scent can carry on through the winter. Just as having a child can act as a sweet reminder of the fair youth’s younger days.

William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 5 Full Poem Text

Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel;
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter, and confounds him there;
Sap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'er-snowed and bareness every where:
Then were not summer's distillation left,
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was:
   But flowers distilled, though they with winter meet,
   Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.