Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day?

It seems as if summer lingered on and on, she slipped out of the room, and then peeked back in, I began to feel as if my summer would be with me for evermore. Alas my sweetheart she is gone, like Persephone disappearing into the jaws of the underworld, leaving her mother Demeter to grieve and bring us rainy tears to nourish the soil, as the autumn season gently winds down, towards that darkest of times.

The Snowy Mountains.

The Snowy Mountains.

I have always been a summer child, memories of a birthday always held on searing hot days, body surfing in rough ocean waves and running quickly, feet almost burning, over sizzling sand dunes. Walking up steep slopes through the brightest of green, green grass, wildflowers like jewels, dotting the rich sweep of lusciousness with every colour you could imagine. Wading through a mountain river, until the sight of a long thick black snake gliding sinuously into the water inspired a hasty departure, calling out to my mother and brother behind me to flee the fearsome serpent!

Oh shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? From me ’tis the highest of compliments, your bright eyes remind me of the sky’s dome of heavenly blue, your hair the glint of sunlight dancing on the leaves and branches of the trees, your spirit the clear, clean optimism of hot days that seem to stretch into a never ending future. No-one does it like William Shakespeare so here for your enjoyment is Sonnet 18.

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 oft’ 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 wanderest 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.