Shall I Compare Thee To A
Summer's Day? 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 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.