Shakespeare's Sonnets (1923) Yale/Text/Sonnet 18
For other versions of this work, see Sonnet 18 (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: 4
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; 8
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; 12
So long as man can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
1–14 Cf. n.
8 untrimm'd: deprived of adornment
10 ow'st: ownest