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Two Shakespeare Sonnets

Song Cycle by Alan Dudley Bush (1900 - 1995)

1.   [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
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]1 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 growest]2:
  [So long]3 as men [can]4 breathe or eyes can see,
  So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Text Authorship:

  • by William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), no title, appears in Sonnets, no. 18

See other settings of this text.

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

  • DUT Dutch (Nederlands) (L. A. J. Burgersdijk)
  • FIN Finnish (Suomi) (Erkki Pullinen) , copyright © 2009, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • FRE French (Français) (François-Victor Hugo) , no title, appears in Sonnets de Shakespeare, no. 18, first published 1857
  • FRE French (Français) (François Pierre Guillaume Guizot) , no title, appears in Œuvres Complètes de Shakspeare Volume VIII, in Sonnets, no. 18, first published 1863
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Ludwig Reinhold Walesrode) , first published 1840
  • ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , "Dovrei paragonarti ad un giorno d'estate?", copyright © 2008, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • RUS Russian (Русский) (Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky) , "Сонет 18", written 1914

View original text (without footnotes)
1 Wilkinson: "Sometimes"
2 Aikin: "times thou grow'st"
3 Wilkinson: "As long"
4 Aikin: "shall"

Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Johann Winkler

2.   [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
    And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand.
    Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand. 

Text Authorship:

  • by William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), no title, appears in Sonnets, no. 60

See other settings of this text.

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

  • FRE French (Français) (François-Victor Hugo) , no title, appears in Sonnets de Shakespeare, no. 60, first published 1857
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Richard Flatter) , appears in Die Fähre, Englische Lyrik aus fünf Jahrhunderten, first published 1936
  • ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , copyright © 2009, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • POL Polish (Polski) (Jan Kasprowicz) , "Sonet 60", appears in Z sonetów, no. 1, Warsaw, first published 1907

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
Total word count: 226
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This website began in 1995 as a personal project by Emily Ezust, who has been working on it full-time without a salary since 2008. Our research has never had any government or institutional funding, so if you found the information here useful, please consider making a donation. Your help is greatly appreciated!
–Emily Ezust, Founder

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