1 of 7

Sonnet XVIII

By: Michael Hart

2 of 7

Meter and Rhyme Scheme

U / U / U / U / U /

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? A

Thou art more lovely and more temperate: B

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, A

And summer's lease hath all too short a date: B

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, C

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; D

And every fair from fair sometime declines, C

By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd; D

But thy eternal summer shall not fade E

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st; F

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, E

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st; F

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, G

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. G

3 of 7

1st Quatrain

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:

In the first quatrain Shakespeare is describing a young man.

He is putting the young man in comparison to a

summers day, also he is stating

that this young man outdoes even nature.

4 of 7

2nd Quatrain

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;

In this quatrain Shakespeare describes the condition

that will affect such perfection. He is saying that times

do not last forever and nor do seasons, which would

be an analogy comparing aging to the seasons changing.

5 of 7

3rd Quatrain

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;

In this quatrain Shakespeare is describing

how the young man will achieve immortality.

The beauty of what lies on the inside of this young man is eternal.

6 of 7

Couplet

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

In the last two lines of this sonnet known as the

couplet the author is making an attempt to keep the life

of the young alive in the minds of the readers.

7 of 7

Characters, Theme and Literary Devices

  • The narrator is an older man making a comparison between a younger man and the beauty of nature.

  • The theme in Sonnet 18 is the power of the author to be able to defy time and make the young man seem immortal. Which is being able to carry the power of the beloved down to future generations.

  • Some literary devices used are:

1. Analogy : In the second quatrain he is comparing age to the seasons, such as people age so do the seasons because the seasons are constantly changing.