Poem of the Month: May 2013

I suddenly realized that I haven't done a poem of the month for a disgustingly long time.  Perhaps because I am longing for a warm summer's day, I looked for summer poems.  For absolutely no reason other than that it is both Shakespearean and mentions summer, I chose Sonnet XVIII of William Shakespeare.  By fortuitous chance, this is also my hundredth post on this blog.

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 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.