Welcome to day 26 of National Poetry Month! As we near the end of the month, I will be sharing with you some of my all-time favorite sonnets.

For tonight, I am reading Shakespeare’s sonnet 18, one of his most famous love sonnets. It captures the common theme of love transcending life here on earth.

Without further ado…..

Sonnet 18: “Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day?” by William Shakespeare

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 owest;
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.