Sonnet 18

By William Shakespeare (1609)

1Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
2Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
3Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
4And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
5Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
6And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
7And every fair from fair some time declines,
8By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimm’d;
9But thy eternal summer shall not fade
10Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
11Nor shall Death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
12When in eternal lines to time thou grows’t:
13So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
14So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.