Sonnet 94

Estrangement and Return

1 They that have power to hurt, and will do none,
2 That do not do the thing they most do show,
3 Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
4 Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow;
5 They rightly do inherit heaven's graces,
6 And husband nature's riches from expense;
7 They are the lords and owners of their faces,
8 Others, but stewards of their excellence.
9 The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
10 Though to itself, it only live and die,
11 But if that flower with base infection meet,
12 The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
13 For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
14 Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.

Notes

TLN 1308archaic vocab
“husband nature's riches from expense”
'Husband' here is a verb meaning to manage frugally, to save and conserve. 'Expense' means spending or expenditure (from Latin 'expensa,' laid out). The line says the self-contained person carefully preserves what nature has given him rather than squandering it. The agricultural sense of 'husbandry' — careful management of land and resources — is present throughout the early sonnets as a running metaphor for how one's gifts should be used.
TLN 1309rhetorical device
“lords and owners of their faces”
The poem draws a sharp legal contrast between two kinds of person: 'lords and owners,' who possess their gifts outright, and mere 'stewards,' who hold them in trust for another and must render account. A steward in Elizabethan law and household practice managed a great estate on behalf of its owner but had no personal claim to what he administered. The distinction reframes personal beauty and talent as forms of property that some people genuinely hold while others only borrow.
TLN 1313archaic vocab
“if that flower with base infection meet”
'Base' means low, ignoble, or morally degraded. 'Infection' in Elizabethan usage could mean any corrupting disease or moral contamination, not only bacterial illness. 'Outbraves' means surpasses in fine appearance or display — the infected lily is actually outdone in dignity by the humblest weed. The comparison turns the social hierarchy of the octave (lords versus stewards) into a natural hierarchy that the corrupted can fall below entirely.