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Home  »  The Oxford Book of English Verse  »  145. Sonnets i

Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.

William Shakespeare. 1564–1616

145. Sonnets i

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,         5
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;  10
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest 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.