Sonnet 94 Power Quotes

If the first thing we learn in the poem is that it is talking about a group of people ("They"), the next thing we learn is that they "have pow'r." Their power takes a particularly disturbing form: it is the power to hurt. And yet, before the first line is even finished, this blow gets softened; we also learn that they "will do none," that is, that they won't hurt anybody. Is this ability to refrain from doing everything that they have power to do just another form of power?

Ice man alert. Apparently one of the things that make these folks so powerful is that they can move people. This line makes us think of powerful leaders, persuading entire countries with speeches that are calculated, but convincing. Often, that gets us into some hot water, so this line isn't exactly all roses.

This line basically expands on the idea from the end of line 3, that the powerful people are "cold." We get some extra description about the creepy coldness of the powerful people, and maybe a little bit of a hint about how they are "moving others" in line 3. We can't be 100% certain, but it seems likely that the "temptation" the speaker is referring to is sexual temptation. This suggests that the powerful people might use sexual temptation to influence others, even as they themselves are able to resist such temptation (they are "to temptation slow"). Hey, it is a sonnet, guys.

After all that hoopla in quatrain 1 about the mysterious coldness of the powerful people, probably the last thing we were expecting was to hear that they "inherit heaven's graces"—not to mention that they do so "rightly." If the speaker had just said they "inherit heaven's graces," we might have taken it as a statement about how "the rich get richer"—this time changed to "the powerful get more powerful." But by sticking that "rightly" in there, he makes it sound like he approves of the whole thing. Why do you think he would say this?

These lines paint a striking picture of the powerful people: they are "lords and owners," and all other people are nothing but "stewards" (that is, servants). So is Shakespeare's whole poem simply in praise of people who are higher up on the social hierarchy? We don't think so. Take another look at what "they" are "lords and owners" of. That's right: "their faces." Similarly, when we look at what the "others" are "stewards" of, we see that it is something very abstract: "their excellence." So maybe all the other poor schlubs just help make the powerful people more "excellent." From this, it looks like Shakespeare is using the language of ownership and servitude as a metaphor for internal differences in people's personalities.

So who's laughing now? Bearing in mind that the "summer's flow'r" here is probably intended as a stand-in for the powerful people we learned about in the poem's first quatrain, it suddenly looks like those tough guys aren't really so tough. One little infection and the "bases weed outbraves" your "dignity"? That makes the powerful people sound pretty fragile (as if being compared to a pretty flower didn't already) if you ask Shmoop.