I have posted it here before (maybe more than once, but that will happen when you've been blogging 6 years), yet again, here it is. Last night, driving home from UVillage, this poem came into my mind and brought a sweet summer smile like only Shakespeare can do.  This sonnet is so closely tied to my high school years, the hurts and pains, forgiveness and processing.  It's always served as a reminder to me that the Lord can use what appears to be a frost, to protect something sweet inside. 

SONNET 5

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 check'd with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'ersnow'd 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.

Interesting note I just learned, this is the only instance where Shakespeare uses the words "unfair" and "leese." He was such a master of language and his vocabulary so broad and well-commanded, I'm inspired every time I read his work. He played with words the way some play with their food.