Sonnet 18

¹Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

²Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

³Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

⁴And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

⁵Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

⁶And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

⁷And every fair from fair sometime declines,

⁸By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd;

⁹But thy eternal summer shall not fade

¹⁰Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;

¹¹Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

¹²When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:

¹³So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

¹⁴So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.