William Shakespeare

(1564 - 1616)

Sonnet 018: Shall I Compare Thee To A

Summers Day?
Shall I compare thee to a summers day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summers 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 natures changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owst;
Nor shall death brag thou wandrest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growst,
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Sonnet 105: Let Not My Love Be Called

Idolatry
Let not my love be called idolatry,
Nor my belovd as an idol show,
Since all alike my songs and praises be

To one, of one, still such, and ever so.

Kind is my love today, tomorrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
Therefore my verse to constancy confined,
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
Fair, kind, and true is all my argument,
Fair, kind, and true varying to other words;
And in this change is my invention spent,
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone.
Which three till now never kept seat in one.