It's the 23rd of April, the date of Shakespeare's birth and death. His writing has always been a big influence on me, and so in his memory, a sonnet familiar and lovely.
Sonnet XVIII
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 grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
William Shakespeare
I held a poetry tea yesterday with some young friends. Each person recited a poem. I recited this Shakespeare sonnet. What I wondered about this sonnet is this, is Shakespeare writing about a lover or about the sonnet? Either way it is delightful.
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