The darling buds of May

I was watching an old movie called The Mating Game, staring Tony Randell on TCM a while back, the storyline reminded me of the British TV show, The Darling Buds of May, which was shown between 1991 and 1993. I liked that show, which is the title of H. E. Bates' story of idyllic country life, written in 1958.

I then started thinking about the phrase "The Darling Buds of May" and wondered where it came from. I did some research (I love the Internet) and found that the phrase came from Shakespeare who coined it in his celebrated Sonnet 18. So on the first day of May enjoy the Sonnet.


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 wander'st 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.