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 wander’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 lives this, and this gives life to thee.
SOURCE: The Society of Classical Poets (2016), 10 Greatest Poems Ever Written, Mount Hope, New York, URL: https://classicalpoets.org/
Legal terminology. The summer holds a lease on part of the year, but the lease is too short, and has an early termination (date).
That is how long these verses will live, celebrating you, and continually renewing your life. But one is left with a slight residual feeling that perhaps the youth's beauty will last no longer than a summer's day, despite the poet's proud boast.
SOURCE: Oxquarry Books Ltd (2014), Shakespeare's Sonnets, URL: http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/18