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Shakespeare's Sonnets - Sonnet 18

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Shakespeare's Sonnets - Sonnet 18
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Sonnet 18

18

Synopsis:

In a radical departure from the previous sonnets, the young man’s beauty, here more perfect even than a day in summer, is not threatened by Time or Death, since he will live in perfection forever in the poet’s verses.

 
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,
4And 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,
8By 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,
12When 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.