Shall I Compare Thee

William Shakespeare — Sonnet 18

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. But thy eternal summer shall not fade, nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st.

First published in 1609 as part of Shakespeare's sonnet sequence, Sonnet 18 is likely the most famous of the 154. It argues that poetry itself can outlast beauty's natural decay — the subject's "eternal summer" will live on as long as the poem is read.