Featured Poem: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thursday this week is of course Valentine's Day, so our featured poem really had to be a love poem. So here is arguably the best love poem in English, Shakespeare's Sonnet 18. For the geeks amongst you it is worth noting that this poem is also available in programming languages including ActionScript, which you can find here on Boing Boing.

Shakespeare, Sonnet 18

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 oft' 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 owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest 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.

Posted by Chris Routledge. Powered by Qumana