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This Month's Articles on Writing |
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 growest.       So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,       So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. |
NOTES: One of Shakespeare’s best known sonnets, this verse notes that the subject is milder and prettier than the loveliest day...before returning to the theme of immortality through poetry. Line 2, temperate: mild—both of temperature and disposition. Line 4: summer’s lease hath all too short a date: summer passes all too quickly. (A lease is a temporary legal entitlement, which expires at a set time). Line 5, the eye of heaven: ie, the sun. Line 7, every fair from fair sometime declines: all things of beauty eventually come to an end. Line 8, untrimmed: deprived of beauty. Line 10, that fair thou ow’st: the beauty you possess. Line 12: eternal lines: immortal poetry. Line 14: this: ie, this verse. |
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