The Sheen of Sweetness is a poetic riddle intended to teach a moral lesson concerning the past, originating in The Ultra-Thorns of Justifying. The rules of the form are applied by poets to produce individual poems which can be recited. The poem is two sexains. A form of parallelism is common throughout the poem, in that certain lines sometimes have reversed word orders. Each line has five syllables. The fourth line of each sexain contrasts the underlying meaning of the first line. The sixth line of each sexain presents a different view of the subject of the third line.