THE SONNETS by William Shakespeare (18)

XVIII

    Shall I compare thee to a summer's day？ Thou art more lovely and more temperate¹： 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 complexion² 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 ofthat fair thou ow'st, Nor shall death brag³ 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.