1 Those hours that with gentle work did frame
Those hours that with careful work created Time slowly crafted time made you beautiful
2 The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell
The lovely face where every eye rests, that gorgeous face everyone stares at, the face nobody can stop watching
3 Will play the tyrants to the very same,
Will turn tyrant against that same beauty, time will attack that very face, time will destroy you
4 And that unfair which fairly doth excel:
And make ugly what once shone with excellence. turning perfection into something you won't recognize. making beauty into ugliness
5 For never-resting time leads summer on
For restless time moves summer forward Because time won't stop—it pushes summer away, time keeps moving
6 To hideous winter and confounds him there,
To horrible winter and destroys it there, into freezing winter that kills everything, toward death and cold
7 Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
Sap frozen and vibrant leaves completely gone, life drained out, leaves fallen away, everything green vanishes
8 Beauty o’er-snowed and bareness every where:
Beauty buried in snow and nothing left anywhere. beauty buried, desolation everywhere. covered in death
Volta Shifts from describing time's destruction to offering the solution: flowers' distilled essence (and by metaphor, children) outlives the flower.
9 Then were not summer’s distillation left
Then if summer's concentrated essence were not saved, But if you could capture summer—its pure essence— unless you bottle summer distillation: concentrated essence, perfume
10 A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Locked like liquid in glass bottles, seal it like perfume in a vial, trap it in glass
11 Beauty’s effect with beauty were bereft,
Beauty and its power would be lost, beauty and everything it means would vanish, beauty would die
12 Nor it nor no remembrance what it was.
Neither the beauty nor memory of what it was would remain. not even a memory of what you once were. completely forgotten
13 But flowers distilled though they with winter meet,
But flowers when distilled, though winter comes, But flowers that are distilled—turned to perfume—survive winter, but perfume survives the cold
14 Leese but their show, their substance still lives sweet.
Lose only their appearance, their essence still lives sweetly. lose their look but their soul persists, fragrant and alive. the essence stays alive