SUMMERTIME

TERESA DA SILVA

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.[1]

I share with you, readers, this well-known sonnet written by the also famous (or infamous, depending on the gender) poet and playwright, William Shakespeare. I shall not bore you with facts and figures related to this great man’s life or lifestyle. Those you can gather in any encyclopaedia. Instead, I beg you to look attentively at the words.

Read the sonnet slowly.
Savour the words and the imagery.
Look up the meanings if need be.
Reread the sonnet even slower.
Stop when you need to close your eyes and envision the scene.

Continue reading.

Learn the poem by heart.


Carry the words on your lips like a smile….a secretive smile, a smile that makes the world smile back.
Change the word “thee” – put in your lover’s name, put in your child’s name, put in your beloved one’s name...
Now, put in your enemy’s name….can you do it? If you can, you’re one step closer to finding peace, to making peace a reality.

For this summer, that my resolution: to bring peace to myself and to those around me. Hopefully it’ll work as a pay-it-forward and others will start doing it, too. At the end of this Black Month, I truly hope that the month of August, the peak of summertime in Portugal, will begin a trend – the peace trend like the ice bucket challenge (only without the video postings). Fun, positive and efficient.

Post the message in your hearts and teach it to others.

Let’s bring peace to ourselves and to the ones around us.

Have a wonderful holiday.

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[1] Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (Sonnet 18) by William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) inhttps://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/shall-i-compare-thee-summers-day-sonnet-18