How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

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.

^{translated from the Spanish by Agnes Blake Poor}

Fair maid! believe me, love is like a lake,
    Whose crystal depths reflect thy brow of snow;
The roses on thy cheek that come and go,
    When in thy azure eyes the smiles awake,

No passing winds the liquid mirror wake,
    The cool refreshing airs so softly blow.
But hidden currents in the depths below
    The angry surface in an instant shake.

Gaze then in safety from the emerald shore;
    Nor launch thy shallop on the treacherous wave.
Even the gentle touch of thy light oar
    May rouse the slumbering peril from its grave.
Thy fragile bark is on rough waters tossed;
    The picture fades, thou sinkest, and art lost.