Sonnet 18

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Sonnet 18 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 owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Sonnet 18 Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? is possibly the most well known of Shakespeare's 154 sonnets and one of the most often quoted lines of Shakespeare. It is referenced in the films Dead Poets Society and Shakespeare in Love and gave names to the band The Darling Buds and the books and television series The Darling Buds of May and Summer's Lease.

[edit] Synopsis

This sonnet is written in the Fair Youth cycle, sonnets 1-126, of Shakespeare's sonnets. Although the beloved's gender is never specifically stated in the sonnet, it is addressed to the Fair Youth, the first of the cycle to express the love between the Fair Youth and the poet. It starts with the line of adoration to the beloved - "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" The speaker then goes on to say that the beloved being described is both "more lovely and more temperate" than a summer's day.

The speaker lists some things that are negative about summer. It is too short - "summer's lease hath all too short a date" - and sometimes the sun shines too hot - "Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines." However, the beloved being described has beauty that will last forever unlike the fleeting beauty of a summer's day. By putting the man's beauty into the form of poetry, the poet is preserving it forever by the power of his written words.

Another reading, disregarding the sonnet's place in the Fair Youth cycle, would put the subject of the poem as a female, with the same interpretations placed upon a woman.

[edit] See also

• Shakespeare's sonnets

[edit] External links

• Sparknotes' reading of the sonnet