English Wordplay ~ Listen and Enjoy
Sonnet 18
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Stephen Greenblatt: "The dream of the child as mirror image, projected into the future, has been shouldered aside by "this" - this love poem, this exquisite mirror made of language, this far more secure way of preserving beauty intact and carrying it forward to succeeding generations. Shakespeare has in effect replaced the woman he was urging to the young man to impregnate; the poet's labour, not the woman's, will bring forth the young man's enduring image."
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George Clifford Earl of Cumberland wearing the Queen's glove on his hat |
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.
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