Love Poems from the Bard

Sonnet 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 shall 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 sometimes 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 grow'st:

       So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

       So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Sonnet CXVI

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

       If this be error and upon me proved,

       I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

~ William Shakespeare ~

BIO: The question is not whether William Shakespeare lived, but whether he actually wrote the plays and other compositions he is known for. Records show that he was baptized on April 26, 1564 at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. During his lifetime, he belonged to the King's Men theatrical group and helped to establish the Globe Theatre in London. His 37 plays are still performed today. He is known for some of the finest sonnets ever written. While some people believe Christopher Marlowe or Francis Bacon secretly wrote Shakespeare's works, the consensus seems to be that William Shakespeare created his own body of works. He died in 1616 and was buried at Trinity Church.