Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
- 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.
Footnotes
The above poem in simple English (source):
- Shall I compare you to a summer’s day?
- You are more lovely and more constant:
- Rough winds shake the beloved buds of May
- And summer is far too short:
- At times the sun is too hot,
- Or often goes behind the clouds;
- And everything beautiful sometime will lose its beauty,
- By misfortune or by nature’s planned out course.
- But your youth shall not fade,
- Nor will you lose the beauty that you possess;
- Nor will death claim you for his own,
- Because in my eternal verse you will live forever.
- So long as there are people on this earth,
- So long will this poem live on, making you immortal.