Sonnet 18
by William Shakespeare
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 dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed;1
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;2
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,3 and this gives life to thee.
1 untrimmed: stripped of beauty.
2 owest: ownest.
3 this: this sonnet.
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Poetry
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