108. Eighteenth Sonnet

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 owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade

When in eternal lines to time thou growest.

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.