Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summers Day

XVIII

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? 

Thou art more lovely and more temperate 

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, 

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd 

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course, un- trimm'd 

But thy eternal summer shall not fade, 

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest 

Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, 

When in eternal lines to time thou growest

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, 

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

William Shakespeare

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