"The Darling Buds of May"

"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..."

Inspired by Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 and the art of Anne Ten Donkelaar, Mrs. Kelley's 5th grade class took a springtime walk around the St. John neighborhood, and entered the whimsical fairy realm of flowers and sunshine presented in this stunning shadowbox. Each pressed flower or photograph was collected in May, 2019 within a four-block radius of our school. The students meticulously cut out the blossoms and posed for this delightful collage that reminds us of the impermanence of youth and the eternal beauty of nostalgia. Imagine your little eleven-year-old gazing at this box on your wall when they are 25, 35, or 50. For surely, "...thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st... So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."