Sonnet No. 18
by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
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, untrimm’d. But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Not lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest; So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long as lives this, and this gives life to thee.
