Sentence No. 24 · 20 April 2026
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, and summer's lease hath all too short a date.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18
William Shakespeare — Sonnet 18 (c.1609) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
The conjunction "and" joins two independent clauses here, each with its own subject and verb ("winds do shake" / "lease hath"). When you see "and" as a phrase, check whether both sides can stand alone — if so, it sits precisely at the midpoint, never at the start.
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 6 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. The poet promises his beloved a form of immortality that summer and time cannot provide. Putting it back in the author’s order is the puzzle — and the order is rarely arbitrary, which is what the note above is about.
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