Hello and welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Friday, June 7th, 2024.

Today, our last sonnet for the week is Sonnet 94 from William Shakespeare,

They that have power to hurt and will do none.

This is a slight departure from the roller coaster of romantic emotions that we've had in this

week's previous episodes, maybe.

We'll talk about that in a minute.

But here is Sonnet 94.

They that have power to hurt and will do none, but do not do the thing they most do show,

who moving others are themselves as stone, unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow.

They rightly do inherit heaven's graces and husband nature's

riches from expense. They are the lords and owners of their faces, others but stewards of their

excellence. The summer's flower is to the summer sweet, though to itself it only live and die.

But if that flower with the base infection meet, the basest weed outbraves his dignity.

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds, lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

First of all, thank you for coming on this week-long ride through some of the unsung heroes of Shakespeare's Sonnet cycle.

Here in Sonnet 94, there seems to be a little moral discurses that we get.

This is a celebration of restraint.

They that have power to hurt and will do none. Shakespeare may be anticipating Nietzsche here.

One aspect of the Superman in Nietzsche's philosophy

was being able to possess power to do a thing and then not use

that power through an exercise of the will. Here, William Shakespeare's speaker seems to be

...