You Left in Summer

You Left in Summer

Bold summer sun brings remembrance
of you in former days.
Of raging winds and storm threatening clouds,
you were not afraid.
You stood on the hill and looked to heaven,
eyes shining bright in expectation,
undaunted by the countless ways
in which disaster might develop.
It was not in your soul to see the darkness
but rather to embrace the sun peeking through,
the endless possibilities,
the remarkable radiance of sun's rays.
But you, too, were vulnerable,
and into that web in which we all are caught
you fell almost not noticing
until it was too late.
Your decline and death, it haunts me still.
I thought to see you always alive and well.

SONNET 18 by William Shakespeare

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 owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.