Happy Shakespeare Day!

William Shakespeare was born on this date, 23 April, in 1564, and died 52 years later on 23 April 1616. So in honor of The Bard, the DGAS is declaring today Shakespeare Day - read a sonnet, quote a 2-liner from any of his plays, just do something that has a connection in any way to this great writer. Today is also St. George's Day and Stratford-upon-Avon (a short jaunt from Delia's old stomping ground, Oxford) - is celebrating not only the dragon-slaying patron saint of England, but its most famous son as well.

So, in honor of William Shakespeare, a non-morbid, non-guilt-inducing, non-depressing Shakespeare sonnet for Delia, the Bard's famous Sonnet XVIII:

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 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.



Delia Gallagher