Sonnet 18
1. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Could I compare you to the time/days of summer?
2. Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
You are more lovely and more gentle and mild than the days.
3. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
The wild wind shakes the favorite flowers of May.
4. And summer's lease hath all too short a date
And the duration of summer has a limited period of time.
5. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
Sometimes the sun shinning is too hot.
6. And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And his gold skin of the face will be dimmed by the clouds.
7. And every fair from fair sometime declines,
Every beautiful thing and person will decline from previous state of beauty.
8. By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
(the beauty) will be stripped of by chance or changes of season in the nature.
9. But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
But your summer exists forever and will not lose color/freshness or vigor. 10. Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
You will never lose your own beauty either.
11. Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
The Death can’t boast that you wander in his shadow.
12. When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
You grow as time grows in the undying lines of my verse.
13. So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long as men can live in the world with sight and breath,
14. So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
This poem will exist and you will live in it forever.。