Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
William Shakespeare (1564—1616)
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date
I posted about this poem at the beginning of the year but it seems appropriate on a windy, rainy day in May to post again Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 which reminds us that, though a lovely summer’s day can’t be guaranteed, a lovely person’s fame doesn’t fade.
Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
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 ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wandr’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long loves this, and this gives life to thee.
This sonnet also gives the title of the first book in the Larkins series of novels by H.E. Bates which were adapted for TV and starred David Jason as Pop, Pam Ferris as Ma, Philip Franks as Charlie and Catherine Zeta-Jones as Marietta. If you’ve seen the TV series but haven’t yet read the books, I’d urge you to do so—the adaptation was very good, but the books are better.