Sonnet No. 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? - Dame Edith Evans

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