Shakespeare's Sonnets

by William Shakespeare

18 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 wander’st 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.

But I forbid thee one most heinous crime: O, carve not with thy hours my love’s fair brow, Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen; Him in thy course untainted do allow For beauty’s pattern to succeeding men. Yet, do thy worst, old Time; despite thy wrong, My love shall in my verse ever live young.

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme; But you shall shine more bright in these contents Than unswept stone besmear’d with sluttish time.

Let this sad interim like the ocean be Which parts the shore, where two contracted new Come daily to the banks, that, when they see Return of love, more blest may be the view; Else call it winter, which being full of care Makes summer’s welcome thrice more wished, more rare.

No longer mourn for me when I am dead Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world that I am fled From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell;

For as the sun is daily new and old, So is my love still telling what is told.

Then if he thrive and I be cast away, The worst was this,—my love was my decay.