“Poets are never allowed to be mediocre by the gods, by men or by publishers.”~Horace, as quoted by Montaigne

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 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 owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

Poets are sometimes rather enamored of themselves and impressed with their own talent, aren’t they? In both this poem and the earlier one by Spenser, the poet says that his beloved is going to live forever —because of this slam-dunk poem I wrote!

“Lovely” has become my adjective of choice lately, but I did think that this version of Shakespeare’s sonnet put to music and sung by David Gilmour (formerly of the band Pink Floyd?) was, well, lovely.

Poetry Friday is happening at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast today. Check it out.