Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

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.

First Quatrain

The poem opens with a question asked by the speaker. The speaker asks the beloved whether he should compare him to a summer day. The next line announces the comparison and says that the beloved is lovelier than a summer day. Moreover, the summer day is extreme, while the beloved is better because he is temperate. The speaker furthers this comparison and says that the darling buds sprouting in May are shaken by the forceful winds that blow in the summer. Furthermore, the lease of summer is also not very long. It is very short-lived.    

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Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;

Second Quatrain

The next quatrain opens with the description of yet another flaw in summer’s beauty. During summers, the sun shines very brightly, and it is very hot. The pleasant weather does not stay. Similarly, the sunshine is sometimes very faint, and the weather gets cold. Having described the numerous flaws in the summer’s beauty, the speaker reflects on the nature of beauty in general. He says that every beautiful thing is destined to see a decline in its charm one day. The reason for this decline may vary, but the decline is guaranteed. Sometimes, it is the bearing of luck and chance, which results in the fading of prettiness. Other times, it is the working of time and nature, which brings old age. This way, no beautiful thing escapes the clutches of future decline.  

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But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,

Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.

Third Quatrain

The first line of the third quatrain directly addresses the beloved and tells him that his beauty is eternal. It will never fade. The speaker tells him that you should not be afraid of losing the charm that you have now. Time will never be able to take it from you. Similarly, death will also fail in dispossessing him of his beauty. The shadows of death will never be able to take him under their control. The speaker says that you will keep on growing in the eternal lines he is saying. These lines do not come under the influence of time and will be able to remain in world till the end of time.

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

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

Couplet

The last two lines of the sonnet describe the reason behind the immortality of the beloved’s beauty. The speaker says that as long as the human race remains here in this world, his lines will be read. With the reading of these lines, the beauty of the beloved described in these lines will remain in this world. This way, the speaker claims that he has given immortality to the beauty of the beloved.