Sonnet 95

Estrangement and Return

1 How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame
2 Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose,
3 Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!
4 O! in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose.
5 That tongue that tells the story of thy days,
6 Making lascivious comments on thy sport,
7 Cannot dispraise, but in a kind of praise;
8 Naming thy name, blesses an ill report.
9 O! what a mansion have those vices got
10 Which for their habitation chose out thee,
11 Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot
12 And all things turns to fair that eyes can see!
13 Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege;
14 The hardest knife ill-us'd doth lose his edge.

Notes

TLN 1318archaic vocab
“canker in the fragrant rose, Doth spot the beauty”
A 'canker' is a plant disease — a spreading rot or blight that eats into stems and buds from within. Here the youth's shame is the hidden corruption inside an otherwise beautiful flower: the rose still looks and smells lovely to the world, but the rot is real. 'Spot' means to blemish or stain.
TLN 1325rhetorical device
“what a mansion have those vices got, Which for their habitation chose out thee”
The poet personifies the youth's vices as tenants who have found an extraordinarily grand lodging. A 'mansion' is simply a large, fine dwelling place — the youth's beauty is so magnificent a house that even vices are elevated by living in it. 'Habitation' means dwelling or place of residence. The device is ironic: the vices are lucky to have found such distinguished quarters.
TLN 1327rhetorical device
“beauty's veil doth cover every blot, And all things turns to fair that eyes can see”
This is the central conceit of the sonnet. A 'veil' is a covering that hides what is beneath it; a 'blot' is a stain or moral blemish. The poet says the youth's beauty acts like a veil that transforms every fault into something the world reads as attractive. Because people can only see the surface, everything about the youth appears fair — the beauty literally converts the ugly to the beautiful for any observer.
historical The sonnet form
TLN 1330rhetorical device
“The hardest knife ill-us'd doth lose his edge”
The closing couplet ends on a proverb: even the finest knife, if used carelessly or for the wrong purpose, will go dull. 'His' is the Elizabethan possessive for 'its.' The lesson is that the youth's beauty — however exceptional — has limits. Misuse wears out even the best instruments. The couplet makes the warning of 'Take heed' specific: the privilege of beauty is not permanent.