SONNETS XVIII:

Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?

William Shakespeare

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 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.

Credits and Copyright

Together with the editors, the Department of English (University of Toronto), and the University of Toronto Press, the following individuals share copyright for the work that went into this edition:
Screen Design (Electronic Edition): Sian Meikle (University of Toronto Library)
Scanning: Sharine Leung (Centre for Computing in the Humanities)