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 thou grow’st:  

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws, And make the earth devour her own sweet brood; Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws, And burn the long-liv'd Phoenix in her blood; Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets, And do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time, To the wide world and all her fading sweets; But I forbid thee one more heinous crime: O, carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow, Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen! Him in thy course untainted do allow For beauty's pattern to succeeding men. Yet do thy worst, old Despite thy wrong My love shall in my verse ever live young.