XVIII.
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.
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Sonnet XVIII – Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (by Shakespeare)
30 Thursday Apr 2009
Posted in 1600s, British, Shakespeare (William), Writing
Crisis Chronicles Cyber Litmag (2008-2015) 
This sonnet is all the more important as it is the first one that refers to the mysterious “Mr. W H” in the dedication. Scholars over the years have tried to figure out who Mr. W H was and what was his relationship to Shakespeare. Could he have been the ‘fair youth’ referred to in his sonnets? No one knows for sure but if you are looking for more opinions on the same, you should check out Sonnet 18 on Shmoop. It really opened up my eyes to the historical and personal background to this now all too familiar poem.
I was unfamiliar with Shmoop until today, but it looks like a great site for literature lovers to check out. Thank you, Natalie!
I originally added this poem to the Library on 2/14/2009. But today I changed the date on it so Shakespeare’s sonnets will appear in numerical order when you click Shakespeare’s name in the Category Index located in the left side bar.