Sonnet xv111
“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 to short a date:
Sometimes the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But the eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’s in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breath or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.”
Sonnet cxv1
“Let me not to the marriage of true minds
admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.” William Shakespeare.
Shakespeare was born on this date, April 23, 1564.
Islander.