Today’s the first day of summer. In honor of the day, here’s one of the best known poems in the English language that refers to the summer. It’s Shakespeare’s Sonnet #18.
Sonnet 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 dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Hope you enjoy reading this classic poem and that you have a nice summer!
Lisa
This article was posted on Wednesday, June 21st, 2006 at 11:41 am and is filed under Authors, Countries & Cultures, English, Languages, Poetry, Poetry about Summer, Poetry about the Seasons, Recommendations, Shakespeare, Sonnet 18, United Kingdom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
One Response to “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?”
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June 23rd, 2006 at 8:36 am
Hey there Lisa, don’t leave your hubby out of the loop, he did such a wonderful (well, wondrous!) rendition and exegesis of this sonnet ;-)
Kind regards
David