RPO -- William Shakespeare : Shakespeare's Sonnets: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

William Shakespeare (ca. 1564-1616)

Shakespeare's Sonnets: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
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 dim'd,

7And every fair from fair sometime declines,

8By chance, or nature's changing course, untrim'd:

9But thy eternal summer shall not fade

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

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

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

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

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

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Shakespeare's Sonnets: Devouring time, blunt thou the lion's paws

Notes

4] date] end-date.

7] fair] lovely thing.

8] untrim'd] stripped of beauty (OED, "untrim," v., 1; first occurrence).

10] ow'st] own'st, owns, and possibly playing on "owes" (as we owe God a life).

11] shade] Cf. Psalms 23.4: "the valley of the shadow of death" (from the Lord's Prayer).

Online text copyright © 2012, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS (London: G. Eld for T. T. and sold by William Aspley, 1609): b4r-b4v.
First publication date: 1609
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: 2008
Recent editing: 1:2008/8/21

Form: sonnet
Rhyme: ababcdcdefefgg

Other poems by William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (ca. 1564-1616)

Shakespeare's Sonnets: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Sonnet 18

Shakespeare's Sonnets: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Sonnet 18