Shall I Compare Thee to a Poetry Slam?

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

A poem helps thou grow’th in thine own way:

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

To find thy place thou feel thy way through ‘t,

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

To stand’th thy ground, and weather, come what may,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date: 

Til end o’ days or til thy will abates,

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

Much more than simply words or dancing rhymes,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; 

So fills thy soul and heart up to th’ brim,

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

A ne’er-ending rhythm in the lines;

By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;

The hardest part is simply to begin,

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

And by thy end no farewell shall be bade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;

As, always, thou shall ha’ this place thou know’st,

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

So oft art woe and blood again remade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st; 

Would that the knave of time may take thee slow’st;

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So steal thy heart away and feign to be—

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. 

As merry as thy poem thee shall read.