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 hath all too short a date:
Sometime
too hot the eye of heaven shines
And often is his gold complexion
dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance
or nature's changing course untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer
shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou
ow'st;
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.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
* * *
Little deeds of kindness, little words of love,
Help to
make earth happy like the heaven above.
Julia A. Fletcher Carney
(1824 1908)
* * *
Cupid and my Campaspe play'd
At cards for kisses: Cupid
paid.
He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows,
His mother's
doves, and team of sparrows:
Loses them too. Then down he throws
The coral of his lip, the rose
Growing on 's cheek (but none
knows how);
With these, the crystal of his brow,
And then
the dimple on his chin:
All these did my Campaspe win.
At
last he set her both his eyes:
She won, and Cupid blind did
rise.
O Love! has she done this to thee?
What shall, alas!
become of me?
Cupid and Campaspe. Act III. Sc. 5.
John Lyly
(believed 1553-1601)
