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Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?


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.
William Shakespeare

 Source: http://poets.org/

It was so hot yesterday in the Valley that I couldn't help but think summer's just around the corner. And one of my favorite poems is this sonnet (#18) from Shakespeare that alludes to summer. Will points out that "Summer's lease hath all too short a date" and at the same time, he says "But thy eternal summer shall not fade". What a study in contrast! Short is the very antithesis of eternal. How poetic!
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