Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18: “Shall I compare thee to a summers day“ | Read by Harriet Walter

Harriet Walter reads William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18: “Shall I compare thee to a summers day“ Subscribe for the latest videos: Facebook ➳ Instagram ➳ X / Twitter ➳ Website ➳ #SouthbankCentre #NationalPoetryLibrary #williamshakespeare Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? 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.