Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough windes do shake the darling buds of Maie,

And Sommers lease has all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every faire from faire some-time declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrim'd;

But thy eternall Sommer shall not fade,

Nor loose possession of that faire thou ow'st,

Nor shall death brag thou wandr'st in his shade,

When in eternall lines to time thou grow'st:

So long as men can breath or eyes can see,

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

Commentary

Address to a fair young man

Changes to the original text: colon inserted for comma at the end of line 12; full stop inserted for comma at the end of line 14.

We have come a long way from stylised exhortations to get married and procreate. The poem is a paean of praise for the young man which nevertheless holds onto the thread that the poet can give the young man's beauty, which is necessarily transient, a sort of eternity. The poet suggests that there is therefore a strong bond between the lover and the beloved, the poet and the aristocrat, cemented in and by poetry. Or at least, that is what the he hopes.

In the first quatrain, the poet compares the young man to a summer's day, but observes that the young man is 'more lovely and more temperate'. Besides, summer's days have rough winds and don't last long.

In the second quatrain, the poet continues his unfavourable commentary on summer, implying that the young man is superior in beauty, temperance, goldenness etc etc 'Untrim'd' in line 8 is untrimmed, and can be taken as a nautical expression, expressing the idea that the day is unbalanced or not good for purpose (to trim a ship is to set the sails with reference to the winds and direction intended), or as unadorned, or indeed as not having everything that is required for a summer's day.

In the third quatrain, the poet makes the point that the young man will have eternal beauty in the poet's verses. 'Ow'st' in line 10 is owns.

The final couplet re-affirms the value of the poet's verse in eternalising the young man's beauty.

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