Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

On my walks in Lincoln Park, one of my favorite destinations is the Shakespeare garden at the south end of the ponds. Here a little path meanders through plantings of (allegedly) all the flowers mentioned by Shakespeare. On four boulders are mounted plaques bearing the words of his Sonnet #18. There are a few benches to pause upon, and often somebody reading a book. Not far away is the statue of Shakespeare. He has his back turned to the city and is regarding flower beds.
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.
Photograph of open workbook by Murky at flicker.com: “These are the notes I made on Shakespeare’s 18th sonnet for my Open University course ‘A103: Introduction to the Humanities’.”