 More recent editors do not favor this alteration, as it narrows the meaning from the larger principles of the sonnet.This poem is a comparison between two flowers that are representations of the youth's beauty.Shakespeare compares these flowers, which vary greatly in their appearance, although they are essentially the same kind of flower, the "canker-blooms" or wild roses, according to Katherine Duncan-Jones, are the less desirable then that of the, assumed, damask or crimson rose.