Sonnet 94 (They That Have Power to Hurt) by William Shakespeare
Quick answer: Sonnet 94 by Shakespeare explained: they that have power to hurt, the festering lilies line, and why this cold, ambiguous sonnet still divides readers.
No sonnet in the sequence has provoked more disagreement than 94. It contains no 'I' and no 'thou', reads like a proverb carved in stone, and ends with one of the most quoted lines Shakespeare ever wrote: 'Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds'. What it actually recommends, and whether it recommends anything at all, has been contested for a century of close reading.
The poem praises, or appears to praise, people who have power to hurt and choose not to use it: cold, self-contained, unmoved movers who tempt others while remaining as stone themselves. They rightly inherit heaven's graces, says the octave. Then the sestet plants a flower in the argument, and the flower rots.
What the poem says
The octave describes a type: those who have power to hurt and do none, who do not do the thing they most show, who move others while remaining themselves 'as stone', unmoved, cold, slow to temptation. These people, the poem declares, rightly inherit heaven's graces and husband nature's riches from expense; they are the lords and owners of their faces, while others are merely stewards of their excellence.
The sestet changes ground entirely. The summer's flower is sweet to the summer even if it lives and dies only to itself. But if that flower meets 'base infection', the basest weed outbraves its dignity. Then the couplet: sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. The praise of cold self-possession has become, without a visible seam, a warning about corruption.
How it works
The missing pronouns are the first device: with no speaker and no addressee named, the poem impersonates impartial wisdom, which is exactly what makes readers suspicious. In the surrounding sonnets the poet is anxious about the fair youth's coolness and possible betrayals, and read in place, 94 sounds less like ethics and more like a message delivered through gritted teeth.
The imagery runs a quiet bait and switch. The octave's language is aristocratic and financial, inherit, husband, lords and owners, stewards. The sestet's is organic, flower, weed, infection, and organic things, unlike estates, rot. The couplet's logic completes the trap: the higher the thing, the fouler its corruption. The lily outranks the weed, and that rank is precisely what makes its festering worse.
Why it lasts
Sonnet 94 lasts because it is the sequence's hardest problem, a poem where tone cannot be finally fixed, and criticism returns to it the way chess players return to famous positions. William Empson's essay on it is itself a classic. It also lasts because the couplet escaped into the language as a general law of hypocrisy and fallen greatness: the corruption of the best is the worst.
And it endures as psychology. Everyone has met the beautiful, self-contained person who moves others and stays stone, and everyone has wondered whether such control is virtue or vacancy. The poem holds the question open with unnerving steadiness.
What today's poet can steal
Steal the missing pronouns. Writing a poem about someone specific entirely in the third person plural, as a class of people, creates a chilled, proverbial voice that can carry anger no direct address could hold; the reader feels the suppressed 'you' behind every line. Steal also the two-register switch: establish your argument in one vocabulary, then test it in another, money then biology, law then weather, and let the second register expose what the first concealed. Finally, end on a maxim that outgrows the poem. A couplet that works out of context is a poem's best chance at four hundred years.
What poets can take from this
- Write about a specific person as a general class; suppressed address creates tension.
- Switch vocabularies between octave and sestet to test your own argument.
- Let organic imagery undermine financial or social imagery; things that grow can rot.
- Keep tone genuinely undecidable when your subject is someone you cannot confront.
- Craft a couplet that survives quotation away from the poem.
Try it yourself
Write a fourteen-line poem about someone who hurt you, using no 'I' and no 'you', describing only the type of person they are, and end with a two-line maxim about that type.
Questions
What does lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds mean?
The nobler something is, the fouler its corruption. A rotting lily smells worse than a weed because more was expected of it; corrupted virtue and fallen greatness are uglier than ordinary badness.
Is Sonnet 94 praise or criticism?
Deliberately unclear. The octave seems to praise cold, self-controlled people who never misuse their power; the sestet warns that such self-contained beauty rots most foully. Most critics read it as praise with a threat inside.
Who is Sonnet 94 about?
It names no one, but sits among the sonnets addressed to the fair youth, and most scholars read it as an oblique meditation on his coolness and the danger of his corruption.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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