William Shakespeare · England · 1609
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.
William Shakespeare · England · 1609
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.
“Shall I compare thee to a summer''s day?…”
Should I compare you to a summer day? You''re actually more beautiful and more balanced: summer winds bruise delicate buds, and summer itself is over too quickly. Sometimes the sun blazes too intensely, sometimes clouds hide it. Everything beautiful eventually fades.
“Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,…”
But your beauty will never fade. You''ll never lose what makes you wonderful. Death won''t even be able to claim you — because you''re growing into something eternal through this poem.
“But thy eternal summer shall not fade,…”
As long as there are humans alive to read words, this poem will live. And as long as this poem lives, so will you.
“ So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,…”
As long as there are humans alive to read words, this poem will live. And as long as this poem lives, so will you.
Why this poem matters
Part of Shakespeare's famous sequence of 154 sonnets, Sonnet 18 makes the radical claim that poetry grants immortality — genuinely believed by Shakespeare and his contemporaries.