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 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.

I like the thought of being immortalized in poem. Shakespeare notes in many of his sonnets that by him writing them, the person who he speaks of will be remembered forever. Her beauty, her mind, her soul may fade, but through a poem, she will live on forever. What an idea. This is why literature is superior to history and to philosophy. This is why one would much rather (I know I would) read a sonnet rather than a dry account of history from one perspective. In history it seems as if only one person is right; in philosophy, it seems as if no one is right. In literature, however, we are capable of seeing many perspectives, and rather than being right or wrong, we are enlightened with new thought, new knowledge that encompasses our lives - literature connects everything. Give me many perspectives! Give me a rebuttal, such as Sir Walter Raleigh's "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" to Christopher Marlowe's "A Passionate Shepherd to his Love". Neither one of these sonnets is wrong; neither one is right. But they both offer the author's perspective - the author's voice - the author's rebuttal to something they find to not connect with what they perceive the situation to be. Where else can one find such thinking than that of literature? Not history. And not philosophy. Literature is where it's at. Literature is where one will live forever.