by William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
Translation

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?  (Sonnet 18)
Language: English  after the 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:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st.
Tho’ I no longer breathe thy heav’nly scent,
Still thy fair memory remains eloquent.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Go, go then, fair flow’r,
Go spread thy petals,
Eternal summer, eternal memory shall remain.

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Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

Settings in other languages, adaptations, or excerpts:

  • Also set in Japanese (日本語), a translation by Tsubouchi Shōyō (1859 - 1935) ; composed by Elliot Weisgarber.

Researcher for this page: John Glenn Paton [Guest Editor]

This text was added to the website: 2019-11-28
Line count: 13
Word count: 97