When that shall vade, my verse distills your truth. The youth is praised not only for his beauty, but for inward truth as well. Those whose beauty is composed only of externalities are compared to wild and scentless roses, whereas those who have inward worth, like the youth, are compared to true roses, which are grown for their scent as much as for their looks. In 67 it is also combined with truth. By that sweet ornament which truth doth give.
Truth adds further to beauty's beauty as an ornament makes a person or thing more beautiful.
Perhaps from this sonnet, Keats fashioned his line Beauty is truth, truth beauty , in the Ode to a Grecian Urn. For that sweet odour, which doth in it live. The canker blooms have full as deep a dye 5. Also, because of the subject matter of the previous sonnet, there is probably a reference to the alchemical meaning of 'the spirit or quintessence of an object'. Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly 7.