Sonnet 18 by William Sheakespeare
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.
Comments by Ira Maine, Poetry Editor
Shall I compare thee to a Summers day?
Wonderful William Shakespeare..
The Bard, in a marvellous conceit, compares his love to a Summer day, and finds the day wanting!
‘…thou [his love] art more lovely and more temperate…’
The lease taken by the English Summer on those few weeks is dangerously brief, even irresponsible, considering how intemperate the season can be…
‘…sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines…’
And, if the heat’s not bad enough, just as often it clouds over and turns cold…
‘…and often is his gold complexion dimmed…’
And then…
‘…And every fair from fair sometimes declines…’
Everything fair, everything beautiful that our Summer produces, will with time fade, as is the natural order of things…
But then the poet by saying;
‘…but thy eternal summer shall not fade…’
appears to contradict himself.The poet says his love will not
‘…lose possession of that fair thou ow’st…’
She will not age and give up that fair (her beauty) to advancing years…nor will death claim her..
‘..nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade…’
‘…when in eternal lines to time thou grow’st…’
What does the poet mean here, what ‘…eternal lines…’?
Gloriously the poet means his lines, the lines of his poem, these lines in which he has captured his loves beauty for ever.
In his poem, his sonnet, he has captured her soul, her very essence and
‘…so long as men can breathe, or eyes can see…’ her reputation ‘…grow’st…’
As long as there is poetry, and eyes to read it..
gives life to thee…’
The very existence of the poem through the generations gives his love renewed life and beauty, as it is read again and again.
‘…As long as men can breathe…and this gives life to thee…’