Sonnet 18

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.

Should I compare you to a day in summer?

Your prime is more ideal.

One never can count on the weather,

And a season is only a quarter real.

Sometimes it’s very hot, the sun,

And sometimes its beauty is clouded.

And everything’s beauty is one day done.

Summer won’t stay: nature’s never allowed it.

But yours is an endless summer

No autumn will ever follow.

The valley of death will never say that you wander

Anywhere into its shadow.

As long as there’s breath in the air and eyes see,

Your life will live here in this poem vibrantly.