Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?

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 wander’st 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.

✍️ Author’s Note

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 has always fascinated me with its simplicity and depth. In just fourteen lines, he captures the fleeting nature of summer and contrasts it with the enduring power of poetry. This piece is my humble reflection on the sonnet’s timeless message—that beauty, love, and memory can outlast time itself when preserved in words. I hope readers not only revisit Shakespeare’s classic but also feel how poetry, even centuries later, continues to give life to the moments and people we cherish.