Shakespeare's Sonnet 5

Those hours, that with gentle work did frameThe lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,Will play the tyrants to the very sameAnd that unfair which fairly doth excel;For never-resting time leads summer onTo 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.

The hours that gently shaped the lovely face on which every eye rests will become tyrants to that same face and make ugly what now excels in beauty. For time never rests: it leads summer into hideous winter and destroys it there. Frost stops the sap, the vigorous leaves are all gone, snow covers beauty, and everything is bare. Then, if summer’s distilled essence had not been preserved, a liquid prisoner shut inside glass walls, beauty’s effects would disappear along with beauty itself. Neither beauty nor any memory of what it was would remain. But flowers distilled into perfume, though winter comes to them, lose only their appearance; their essence still lives on in sweetness.