Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (Sonnet 18)

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 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 wand’rest 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.