6
Shall I compare you to 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:
Sometimes 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 changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee
SONNET XVIII