A.k.a. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
John’s related banter…
(Quotes a version of the sonnet’s opening casually)
That William Shakespeare he knew how to deliver a complement. That’s right, today we’re talking about Shakespeare’s sonnets, collected and published in 1609.
crashcourse | Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Crash Course Literature 304)
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
(Unquoted remainder)
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 time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
John Green Reads Poetry 