National Poetry Day

April 28 is national poetry day.

Sonnet 18 is one of those poems that pops up as one of the most perfect ever written. Shakespeare declares in the final lines of the sonnet that appreciation for the subject of this poem will endure as long as the poem itself.

My mother sometimes recited this poem while she was washing the dishes.

Here's a tribute to you, Mom.

Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day

By William Shakespeare

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.

And here’s a poem for children and the young at heart:

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

By Jane Taylor

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

How I wonder what you are!

Up above the world so high,

Like a diamond in the sky.

When the blazing sun is gone,

When he nothing shines upon,

Then you show your little light,

Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.

Then the traveler in the dark

Thanks you for your tiny spark,

How could he see where to go,

If you did not twinkle so?

In the dark blue sky you keep,

Often through my curtains peep

For you never shut your eye,

Till the sun is in the sky.

As your bright and tiny spark

Lights the traveler in the dark,

Though I know not what you are,

Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

--Jane Taylor - Copy produced from The Golden Book of Poetry (1947)