Sonnet 18

William Shakespeare

Elizabethan Era

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 sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's 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 18" is one of the best-known of the 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It's one of his most beautiful sonnets, discussing the comparisons between the beauty of a summer's day and the beauty of the beloved, and ultimately the power of the poet's verse to immortalize these.