Shall I compare thee to a winter's eve?
Thou art more frigid and more icy cold.
Rough winds do shake the autumn leaves. I grieve
Because their fine display is pyrite gold,
As were the promises you made of love;
Small ghosts of falsehood grey against the moon.
We billed and cooed as does the mourning dove
But nature changes course when opportune
And yours in truth was quite chameleon.
You kept what you'd vouchsafed, but not your word.
Those harlot words, like lips vermillion,
Have kissed the wind and other lovers stirred
With crystal promises as light as snow,
To tempt adrift an endless stream of beaux.
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Author Notes
Iron pyrite = fool's gold
Shakespeare's original sonnet:
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 dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest 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.
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