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Poetry · Poem

SHALL I compare thee to a Summer’s day?

William ShakespeareEnglish RenaissancePoem
SOURCE TEXT · English original
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 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.
Cultural reading

Reading the poem

The speaker asks whether to compare the beloved to a summer day, finds the beloved more lovely and temperate than summer’s brief and changeable beauty, and promises that these enduring lines will preserve that beauty and life as long as people can breathe or see.

Language notes

Text and edition

The heading reproduces the sonnet’s opening line and serves as an anthology first-line identifier; the supplied fourteen lines form a complete English sonnet.