FOR St Valentine’s Day, two of the great love poems in the British canon; the first by Shakespeare, the second by Burns. Note the hyperbolic claims of each great poet: Shakespeare that he will give his lover immortality through his words; Burns that he will continue to love till all the seas gang dry and the rocks melt wi’ the sun!

SONNET 18

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.

A RED RED ROSE

O my Luve’s like a red, red rose,

That’s newly sprung in June;

O my Luve’s like the melodie

That’s sweetly play’d in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonie lass,

So deep in luve am I;

And I will love thee still, my Dear,

Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my Dear,

And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:

I will luve thee still, my Dear,

While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only Luve!

And fare thee weel, a while!

And I will come again, my Luve,

Tho’ it were ten thousand mile!