Sonnet V | Those hours, that with gentle work did frame

Those hours, that with gentle work did...

Language: English

Our translations: ITA

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 distill'd, though they with winter meet,
  Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

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Text Authorship:

by William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), no title, appears in Sonnets, no. 5 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

by Dorothea Austin , "Those hours, that with gentle work did frame", 1985-6 [ narrator and woodwind quintet ], from Mirrors, no. 1 [sung text not yet checked]
by Stephan Baekers , "Shakespeare -- Sonnet V", 1984 [ medium voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
by Michael G. Cunningham (b. 1937), "Those hours, that with gentle work did frame", op. 112 no. ? (1985) [ medium-high voice and piano ], from Shakespeare Sonnets, Set 2 [sung text not yet checked]
by David Loeb , "Those hours, that with gentle work did frame", 1980 [ baritone and piano ], from Three Shakespeare Sonnets [sung text not yet checked]
by Richard Simpson (1820 - 1876), "Sonnet V", 1864 [ low voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
by David Winkler , "Sonnet V", 1978 [ mezzo-soprano, tenor and instrumental ensemble (10 instruments) ] [sung text not yet checked]
by David Winkler , "Sonnet V", 1981 [ SATB quartet and piano ], from Cycle for Several Voices and Piano, no. 5 [sung text not yet checked]

Settings in other languages, adaptations, or excerpts:

Also set in Latvian (Latviešu valoda), a translation by A. Balodis ; composed by Pauls Miervaldis Dambis.
- Go to the text. [Note: the text is not in the database yet.]

Other available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

FRE French (Français) (François Pierre Guillaume Guizot) , no title, appears in Œuvres Complètes de Shakspeare Volume VIII, in Sonnets, no. 5, first published 1863
FRE French (Français) (François-Victor Hugo) , no title, appears in Sonnets de Shakespeare, no. 5, first published 1857

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website: 2007-10-07
Line count: 14
Word count: 104