这首诗是莎士比亚献给一位“黑肤女性”（the dark lady）的（也有人认为，第1至126首十四行诗都是献给一位贵族男士的），也是公认的名篇。全诗的基本节律是五音步抑扬格，包括三个四行组（quatrain）和一个两行组(couplet)。韵脚为abab cdcd efef gg。原文和韵律标注如下（“∨” 为弱音，“— ”为强音）：

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