Sonnet XVIII
By: Michael Hart
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Characters, Theme and Literary Devices
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.