Shakespeare's Sonnets Navigator Summary of Sonnet 18 in the Table of Contents Notes for Sonnet 18

Shakespeare's Sonnet 18


  1    Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
  2    Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
  3    Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
  4    And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
  5    Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
  6    And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
  7    And every fair from fair sometime declines,
  8    By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
  9    But thy eternal summer shall not fade
 10    Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
 11    Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
 12    When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
 13      So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
 14      So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

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