Sonnet 18

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (April 23, 1564–April 23, 1616), sometimes called The Bard of Avon or even The Bard, was an English playwright and poet. He is widely regarded as the greatest English writer in history. Some of his most famous plays include Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet, and The Taming of the Shrew. Each of these plays has been performed widely over the centuries, and the basic plot of each of them has been adapted to dozens of books and movies. It is hard to overstate the degree of Shakespeare's influence on English literature.

Along with his plays, Shakespeare also wrote 154 sonnets, including the poem shown below.

Sonnet 18

William Shakespeare
1609

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 dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed:

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.

Study Questions

What is the theme of this poem?
What makes this a love poem?
What rhyme scheme does the poem use?
What is the meaning of each line? Can you re-word the poem in a simpler fashion?

References

Mabillard, A. (1999). Sonnet 18. Shakespeare Online.

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