Hello and welcome to the Daily Poem. I'm Heidi White, filling in today for David Kern.

Today I'm going to read for you Shakespeare's Sonnet 73. Today is considered by many to be Shakespeare's birthday, or at least his baptism day. There is some debate

in the Shakespearean scholarly community as to what day he was actually born and nobody's really

sure, but we do know that this week is really the beginning and of course then later the ending also of Shakespeare's life

because he died over the course of this week in April as well.

So in his honor, the greatest master of the English language in the history of the world,

today we will read one of his greatest and most famous sonnets.

Sonnet 73 by Shakespeare.

That time of year thou mayst in me behold,

when yellow leaves or none or few do hang,

upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou seest the twilight of each day,

as after sunset fadeth in the west,

which by and by black night doth take away,

death's second self that seals up all in rest. In me thou seest the glowing of such fire that on the ashes of his youth doth lie, as the deathbed whereon it must expire, consumed with

that which it was nourished by. This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, to love that well,

which thou must leave ere long. Like I said, this is one of Shakespeare's most famous sonnets.

It is, of course, 14 lines of iambic pentameter. That's what makes a sonnet. And every other

line rhymes until you get to the last two lines, which those two rhyme. They're called a couplet.

So I chose this sonnet to read to you today because something very important happened in my

life this week. One is it was

...