Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
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.
By William Shakespeare
Summary of Sonnet 18
Sonnet 18 is one of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets. The sonnets are mostly related to love, beauty, elapsing and morality. Sonnets 1–17 mentions the benefits of getting married and having children. With Sonnet 18, the theme changes dramatically towards romantic terms, and this theme continues throughout the collection.
In the first two lines of Sonnet 18, the poet asks the woman he loves if he can compare her with a summer day or not. But after that, he answers his question. He states that she is better than a summer day because she is prettier and milder. Maybe he knows that asking a question like that is not so convenient and also, a summer day might be discontentedly hot and his beloved might not be perfect indeed, but he thinks their love is true. In the second two lines, the poet talks about buds. He believes that summer is a landlord who gives us nice days for a short time, and the landlord takes them back without passing a long time. In the fifth and sixth lines, the poet states that weathers can’t be predictable. He thinks that the sun is the eye of the sky (human) and it might be burning. With this metaphor, we can infer that both sun and someone’s eyes sometimes do shine. Neither the weather is predictable, nor the human mood. Perhaps, some natural events such as rain, snowfall and storm are like people’s mood. In the seventh and eighth lines, the poet concludes that all beautiful things lose their beauty at some point. This usually happens for two reasons. The first reason is coincidence because sometimes an event such as an accident can cause deformities and loss of beauty. The second reason is a result of changes in nature, as the poet describes in the lines. In the ninth and tenth lines, the poet states that his beloved’s beauty is permanent, not like the summer’s temporariness. He thinks his beloved’s beauty will never end. In the eleventh and twelfth lines, the poet believes that his beloved is not going to die. He can’t deny that his beloved will grow old. The only thing he can say is that it won’t matter that she finally grows old. In the last two lines, he says that his poem shall be read and his beloved will live in this poem in every time that human can see. Also, he thinks that this poem will give vitality to his beloved forever.
Consequently, Shakespeare uses Sonnet 18 to aggrandize the beauty of his beloved. He mentions all the ways to tell us why a day in summer shouldn’t be preferred to his beloved’s beauty. The highlighted theme of this poem is the eternity of the poet’s love and eternising someone who is loved.
