Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day By William Shakespeare

S4 E11: Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day By William Shakespeare
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 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.
Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare is perhaps one of the best-known and most-loved poems in the English language. It is part of the Fair Youth sequence, a series of sonnets that are addressed to a young man of great beauty. The sonnet’s opening line, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?,” immediately sets the tone for the poem.
William Shakespeare goes on to describe how the beauty of the young man surpasses that of a summer’s day, which is often seen as the epitome of beauty and vitality. The use of imagery throughout the sonnet allows the reader to vividly imagine the young man’s timeless beauty. The poem also explores the theme of immortality through verse, as Shakespeare promises that the young man’s beauty will be preserved forever in his words.
The concluding couplet, “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee,” further emphasizes the idea that the poem itself will ensure the young man’s enduring legacy.
When I recite Sonnet 18 I feel a sense of awe and admiration for the enduring power of love and beauty, the timeless elegance and the transcendence of mortality. Giving voice to William Shakespeare’s words prompts a deep connection to the beauty of nature and an acknowledgment of the immortalizing effect of art and poetry.
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