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The Full Text of “Sonnet 94: "They that have power to hurt"”
1They that have power to hurt and will do none,
2That do not do the thing they most do show,
3Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
4Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow:
5They rightly do inherit heaven's graces
6And husband nature's riches from expense;
7They are the lords and owners of their faces,
8Others but stewards of their excellence.
9The summer's flower is to the summer sweet
10Though to itself it only live and die,
11But if that flower with base infection meet,
12The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
13For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
14Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
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“Sonnet 94: "They that have power to hurt"” Introduction
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“Sonnet 94” was written by the English poet and playwright William Shakespeare and first published in 1609. The speaker begins this particular poem by praising the kind of beautiful, powerful person who practices extreme self-restraint. The speaker then switches gears, noting that even lovely flowers can become infected—and that rotting flowers are then worse than any weed. The implication is that the seemingly ideal person from the first half of the poem is like those flowers: though they might appear perfectly self-controlled on the outside, they're susceptible to corruption and capable of rotten behavior. “Sonnet 94” belongs to what scholars call the "Fair Youth" sequence, 126 of Shakespeare's sonnets addressed to an unnamed young man with whom the speaker has an intimate relationship.
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“Sonnet 94: "They that have power to hurt"” Summary
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People who have the power to hurt others but don't—who don’t do the things that they seem most likely to do, who are able to affect other people but themselves remain stiff as a rock, who are stoic, cold, and difficult to tempt—these people are the ones who receive the God's approval and generosity. These kinds of people hold onto their gifts and do not let go of or share what they have been given. These people are totally in control of their expressions. Everyone else can simply appreciate and marvel at this type of person’s excellence. In a similar way, the summertime itself can appreciate the sweetness and beauty of a summer flower. That flower, by contrast, doesn’t notice or value its own beauty in the same way. A flower’s only concerns are of being alive or of being dead. But if that flower is struck by a foul infection, even the common weed is braver and more dignified. After all, sweet things (both seemingly perfect people and beautiful flowers) turn all the more corrupt as a result of their own actions. Rotting lilies smell much worse than weeds.
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“Sonnet 94: "They that have power to hurt"” Themes
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The Value of Restraint
“Sonnet 94” begins with sweeping, bold statements praising people who display a lot of restraint. Those who are able to remain “unmoved, cold” and resist temptation, the speaker argues, are favored by God and superior to others. That said, the poem’s ultimate stance on restraint is up for debate: it’s possible that the speaker is actually being ironic in presenting emotional detachment and extreme self-control as good things. In other words, the speaker might be mocking these people rather than applauding them.
In any case, the speaker starts the poem by saying that people who can control their emotions and desires have a few things in common. For one, these types of people have power but don’t use it. Though they can cause “hurt” they “will do none.”
The speaker, rather elliptically, also says that these restrained people, “do not do the thing they most do show”—they don’t do whatever it is they seem most likely to do. The restrained person may be very physically attractive but choose to remain chaste, for example; although they may arouse sexual interest in others, they themselves remain unaffected. They’re also immobile as “stone”; they keep their feelings private and don’t easily give in to temptation. Another part of restraint, then, is the ability to maintain a difference between one’s inner self and outer appearance or expression.
Such people, the speaker continues, are essentially better than everyone else and “rightly” receive the grace of heaven. In other words, their restraint means that they are favored by a divine power. What’s more, the speaker says, though the restrained person receives “nature’s riches,” they do not spend them: they hold on to their perfection and do not seek to share it with others. Using language related to hierarchy (words like “lords” and “owners”) the speaker notes that everyone else who cannot muster restraint must be a lowly “steward” to those excellent, ideal people. Though most people cannot be perfect, they can appreciate and wonder at seeming perfection.
Yet all this celebration of restraint is undercut by the speaker’s potentially mocking tone. Readers might wonder, how can the ideal person be as cold as stone? Doesn’t not spending riches make you stingy? To some readers, the speaker has painted an image of a selfish, unfeeling hoarder—the kind of person who knows just how powerful they are, and “lords” their self-possession over other people.
What’s more, as the poem continues, it suggests that even these perfect specimens are subject to corruption. In fact, the speaker insists, corruption is ultimately even more terrible when it comes from such seeming models of virtue! It’s up to readers, then, to decide whether the speaker is being truly sincere in praising emotional restraint—or if the poem is actually critiquing people who act like they’re above everyone else.
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Corruption and Hypocrisy
While the first part of this poem seems to praise the values of restraint, the second part suggests that such cool, calm, and collected people aren’t always what they seem. After seeming to celebrate the virtues of the restrained person, the speaker switches gears to talk about how a sweet and beautiful flower can get infected and start to fester. The implication is that the people from the poem’s opening are like that flower: susceptible to corruption and foul deeds. What’s more, the speaker says, this corruption is worse when it comes from those who outwardly act like models of virtue.
Readers can take the flower to represent those seemingly perfect people from the first lines of the poem. The flower, like the type of person described, appears beautiful and does not seem to be affected by its own beauty as others are. And yet, if this flower gets infected, it will fester and stink. Likewise, the poem implies, these seemingly perfect, self-possessed people are susceptible to corruption: they too can “fester” and rot.
Specifically how this corruption occurs is unclear. All that the speaker tells the reader is that “deeds” are what turn sweet things sour. This suggests that behavior, and not appearance, is what actually defines people. When the outwardly beautiful and restrained person abuses their power or acts in a nasty way, they corrupt their outer perfection.
In fact, the speaker argues that a seemingly perfect person doing bad deeds is even worse than someone who never seemed perfect to begin with! Because it was never very pretty or sweet, even a simple weed is more dignified than the infected flower. Likewise, a regular person is better than a corrupted, supposedly ideal person.
While it's possible to read the speaker as being sincerely sad about this corruption, the speaker also could be taking some pleasure in seeing such a fall from grace. On that note, though this sonnet can be read as a standalone poem, its meaning changes when readers take into account that it belongs to Shakespeare’s Fair Youth Sequence.
These sonnets are read as being addressed to a rich and beautiful young man with whom the poems’ male speaker has an intimate (and likely romantic) relationship. At one point in the sequence, the speaker feels continuously rebuffed and met with coldness on the young man’s part. In other words, his love for the youth (either platonic or sexual) is unreciprocated.
The seemingly perfect and restrained type described in this poem can be read as a portrait of that fair youth. The speaker's stance on restraint is thus conflicting: the speaker is both attracted to the young man’s seeming perfection and frustrated by his distance and lack of interest. If the speaker is being rejected by the fair youth, maybe he feels satisfied by the fair youth being brought down a few pegs.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Sonnet 94: "They that have power to hurt"”
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Lines 1-2
They that have power to hurt and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,In the poem's first two lines, the speaker begins to describe a certain kind of person: one who is capable of hurting others but chooses not to do so. The speaker doesn't the specific kind of “hurt," but is likely talking about emotional, possibly romantic, injury.
The next line then sets up a paradox of sorts: this is the type of person who doesn't don’t do that very thing they seem most likely to do. The diacope here turns line 2 in particular into a tongue twister of sorts; in the short space of a single line, the speaker says the word “do” three times (four if you include line 1):
That do not do the thing they most do show,
In lines describing restraint, it's also interesting that the speaker keeps using the word “do,” which conveys action—the very opposite of restraint!
These lines are written in iambic pentameter, meaning that each line has five iambs—poetic units consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (da-DUM, da-DUM). The meter in these first two lines is mostly regular, though it's possible to read that opening "They" as a stressed beat (and note that "power" scans as a single syllable, "pow'r"):
They that have power [...]
Reading the line this way adds extra emphasis to the kind of person the speaker is describing. The second line is then perfectly iambic:
That do not do the thing they most do show
Notably, these first two lines contain very short words: the words here are all monosyllabic (consisting of one syllable). The short words, combined with close adherence to iambic pentameter, lend these lines a sense of rigidity and control. The self-restraint practiced by the type of person being described is echoed in the regular, restrained sound of the lines themselves.
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Lines 3-4
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow:
Unlock all 334 words of this analysis of Lines 3-4 of “Sonnet 94: "They that have power to hurt",” and get the Line-by-Line Analysis for every poem we cover.
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Lines 5-6
They rightly do inherit heaven's graces
And husband nature's riches from expense; -
Lines 7-8
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others but stewards of their excellence. -
Lines 9-10
The summer's flower is to the summer sweet
Though to itself it only live and die, -
Lines 11-12
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity: -
Lines 13-14
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
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“Sonnet 94: "They that have power to hurt"” Symbols
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The Flower
The most significant symbol in "Sonnet 94" is the flower introduced in line 9, which represents the self-restrained person described at the beginning of the poem. Like such a person, the flower looks beautiful on the outside. A personified summer finds the flower "sweet" and tends to it, offering it nourishing warmth and light; it essentially fawns over the flower, just as lesser people act as "stewards of" the self-restrained person's excellence.
The flower itself, however, doesn't seem to care about the summer's affection: all that concerns it is life and death. This reflects the way that the person described at the beginning of the poem is "unmoved" by others. Both the flower and self-restrained person are lovely but aloof, inspiring others but themselves uninspired.
And flowers, the speaker also makes clear, aren't always as perfect as they seem: they can become sick, infected at the root, and start to rot and "fester"—just as the high and mighty person from the beginning of “Sonnet 94” is capable of corruption, hypocrisy, and general unpleasantness.
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Weeds
The weed mentioned at the end of the poem represents a regular, imperfect, and not particularly self-restrained type of person. The weed basically symbolizes all that the flower does not.
The speaker refers to the weed as “base,” meaning that it is common, inferior to the beautiful flower. And yet, the speaker insists, the weed does have one advantage over the flower: it doesn’t have many expectations placed on it. There are no demands that the weed must be beautiful. And because it was never very dignified anyway, any kind of corruption it might experience is not all that tragic. It's already "base," so it can't fall that far.
Through the symbol of the weed, it's possible to read the poem as asserting that grandeur is overrated. Perhaps the speaker is suggesting that there is something respectable about being just a normal, humble person.
Read in the context of Shakespeare's other sonnets, one might take the flower to represent the fair youth and the weed to represent the speaker of these poems himself. As someone of a lower social status, the speaker neither places upon himself or has placed upon him expectations of greatness or perfection.
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“Sonnet 94: "They that have power to hurt"” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Metaphor
There are quite a few metaphors in the poem. Most obvious, perhaps, is the implied comparison between flowers/weeds and self-restrained people/everyone else. Readers can understand that the flowers of the poem's second half are meant to symbolize the self-restrained people of the first.
But there are more discrete metaphors as well. In line 7, for example, the speaker says, "They are the lords and owners of their faces." Just as a lord might control a piece of land and all who live on it, or like an owner controls their property, the self-restrained person controls their own face.
In line 8, there is another metaphor: “Others but stewards of their excellence." Here, the speaker deems normal people “stewards”—people whose job is to tend to those "lords" from the prior line. Metaphors like this establish the contrast between the self-restrained (and self-important) people that the speaker seems to praise and everyone else.
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Simile
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Personification
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Irony
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Caesura
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Assonance
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Sibilance
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Juxtaposition
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“Sonnet 94: "They that have power to hurt"” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Heaven's graces
- Husband
- Expense
- Stewards
- Base
- Outbraves
Heaven's graces-
In Christian faiths, grace is the gift of God’s goodness. Christian theology holds that grace is something given freely to all believers. Notably, the poem seems to claim that certain people receive more grace than others. In this sense, the poem uses the term loosely.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Sonnet 94: "They that have power to hurt"”
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Form
“Sonnet 94” is a Shakespearean sonnet. That means it has 14 lines broken up into three quatrains (four-line stanzas) and ends with a rhyming couplet.
The final couplet of a Shakespearean sonnet typically serves as a quick summation of the poem or offers a condensed statement of the poem’s argument. This is certainly the case with the last lines of "Sonnet 94," which read as a kind of pithy aphorism. Notice how the couplet finally brings together the two seemingly disparate concerns of the poem—flowers and types of people.
While Shakespearean sonnets typically consist of three quatrains and a couplet, Italian or Petrarchan sonnets consist of an octave and a sestet: an eight-line stanza followed by a six-line stanza, with a shift in thought/argument (called a turn, or "volta") in between (at line 9).
Though “Sonnet 94” is a relatively typical Shakespearean sonnet in many ways, it also contains a clear turn in line 9: there's a distinct thematic shift between the first eight lines of the poem and the final six. It's only in line 9 that the symbol of the flower appears, and it takes until the last two lines of the poem for the connection between this flower and the people described in the poem's first half to become clear.
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Meter
“Sonnet 94” is written in iambic pentameter. This means that each line has five iambs, poetic feet with a da-DUM rhythm.
Line 4 is a perfect example of this meter in action:
Unmo- | ved, cold, | and to | tempta- | tion slow:
Notice how a regular meter is particularly suitable for the content of this line. Like the person being described, the meter is steady, "unmoved." The poem's meter here is itself restrained.
The meter throughout the poem is pretty regular for the most part. At some moments, words must be shortened to fit the meter (as with “power” in line 1 and “flower” each time it appears; both words should be read as having one syllable, "pow'r," "flow'r"). These slight alterations don't affect the meaning of the poem.
That said, there are some clear variations in the meter that do have a noticeable impact. The most dramatic deviation occurs in the last line of the poem:
Lilies | that fe- | ster smell | far worse | than weeds.
This line begins with a trochee, a different kind of metrical unit consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. Because this deviation of the expected meter occurs at the beginning of the line, it's all the more pronounced. Then, there's a type of foot called a spondee (stressed-stressed) with "far worse," resulting in an emphatic three stressed beats in a row: "smell | far worse."
This is no accident. Shakespeare waits until the very end of the poem to shift the meter in order to draw the reader’s attention to the last line and to emphasize the corruption of the supposedly ideal person introduced in the first half of the poem. The meter falls apart, evoking the way that seeming perfection can "fester."
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Rhyme Scheme
“Sonnet 94” follows the typical rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet:
ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
In other words, each quatrain uses an interlocking rhyme pattern: the first and third lines rhyme with each other, as do the second and fourth; the last two lines of the poem then form a rhyming couplet. The quick one-two punch of that couplet makes the ending sound pithy and almost like an aphorism, a quick doling out of wisdom as the speaker wraps up the poem's argument.
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“Sonnet 94: "They that have power to hurt"” Speaker
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"Sonnet 94" belongs to Shakespeare's "Fair Youth" sequence, a group of 126 poems conventionally read as having a male poet as their speaker and being addressed to a handsome young lover (or, perhaps, very close friend).
Scholars debate how autobiographical these poems are and whether readers should assume that Shakespeare himself is the speaker. It's worth noting that there's no actual indication within this sonnet itself of the speaker's gender, occupation, age, etc. As such, the poem can be read as a general statement about corruption and self-restraint.
What readers can assume, however, is that the poem's speaker is not one of those self-possessed people being praised at the poem's opening. On the contrary, the speaker seems to clearly be one of the "stewards" of such people's "excellence."
How the speaker feels about this situation is up for debate. It's possible that the speaker is sincere in his praise and genuinely thinks that self-restrained people are deserving of all their good fortune. At the same time, it's also possible that the poem is meant to be ironic—that the speaker is actually mocking such people for being callous and cocky.
The poem's context adds nuance here. At this point in the sonnet sequence, the speaker has been rebuffed by the fair youth—a beautiful, rich, and upper-class young man. It's possible that the speaker is resentful of the youth's refusal to engage romantically, and has written this poem to subtly critique him.
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“Sonnet 94: "They that have power to hurt"” Setting
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Most of Shakespeare’s sonnets—“Sonnet 94” included—don’t have a particular setting. While their language belongs to Elizabethan London, where and when the poems were written, there are very few setting markers in the poems themselves.
This lack of a defined time or place adds to the poem’s ability to make general statements about relationships, human behavior, and love. The speaker’s observations can apply to the specific context of his relationship with a certain person, but the observations are also true generally, regardless of context.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Sonnet 94: "They that have power to hurt"”
Literary Context
“Sonnet 94” was published in a 1609 quarto alongside 153 Shakespearean sonnets and a longer poem entitled “A Lover’s Complaint.” This poem was likely written during the 1590s, however, a few years prior to publication.
Shakespeare's sonnets can be broken into two sequences: the first 126 comprise the "Fair Youth" sequence, addressed to a young, handsome man; sonnets 127-154 comprise the "Dark Lady" sequence, addressed to a dark-haired woman. The "Fair Youth" sonnets chart the speaker's relationship with and devotion to this mysterious youth, who is aristocratic, beautiful, sought-after, and self-centered. "Sonnet 94" appears at a point in the sequence when the speaker has begun to feel betrayed by and frustrated with the youth.
The sonnet form originated in Italy and was often used to write about courtly love (that is, about aristocratic romance). Sonnets began to enter English literature in the 1530s and 1540s; while Shakespeare was not the first to use the form in English, he did help popularize it.
Shakespeare’s sonnets often draw on the courtly love tradition, whose thematic hallmarks include restraint and unrequited love. Yet even as Shakespeare’s sonnets engage many of these themes, they also at times subvert the form’s conventions. Much courtly love poetry centers on unattainable, ideal women, for example; neither of the love interests in Shakespeare’s sonnets fit this type. The fair youth isn't a woman, for one thing, and the dark lady isn’t conventionally attractive.
Historical Context
William Shakespeare was born in England in 1564. The majority of his writing career took place during the monarchy of Queen Elizabeth I. The period of her reign, 1559-1603, is often referred to as a golden age during which England experienced relative peace and the arts flourished.
Scholars debate the identity of the "fair youth" addressed in the sequence of which "Sonnet 94" is a part, as well as whether the poems are meant to be read as autobiographical. Supporting the idea that Shakespeare himself is the poems' speaker is the fact that they were likely meant to be circulated privately and were initially published without Shakespeare's permission. While close, affectionate male relationships were accepted in the Elizabethan era, homosexuality generally was not. That said, some scholars debate whether the relationship between the sonnets' speaker and the fair youth was truly romantic in nature or simply an intense friendship.
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More “Sonnet 94: "They that have power to hurt"” Resources
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External Resources
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What Is a Sonnet? — Learn more about the poetic form that Shakespeare helped popularize.
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First Printing of the Sonnets (1609) — Check out scans of the first printing of the sonnets via the British Library.
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"Sonnet 94" Read Aloud — Listen to actor Sir Patrick Stewart read "Sonnet 94" out loud.
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More on Shakespeare's Life — Learn more about the man behind the sonnets.
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The Mysterious Identity of the "Fair Youth: — This article attempts to unravel the mystery of the fair youth.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by William Shakespeare
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