Sonnet 18/Summary by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 18

Shall I comparison thee to a summers day?

Thou art more than pin-up and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the pricey buds of May,

And summers lease hath all too short a era:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And a lot is his bullion complexion dimmd;

And every funfair from fair sometime declines,

By pretend or natures changing course untrimmd;

But thy unremitting summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair gee owest;

Nor shall Death ball up thou wanderst in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

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

Summary

The speaker opens the meter with a question addressed to the beloved: Shall I compare thee to a summers day? The next eleven lines are abandoned to such a comparison. In line 2, the speaker stipulates what in the main differentiates the young man from the summers day: he is more lovely and more temperate. Summers days tend toward extremes: they are shaken by rough winds; in them, the sun (the eye of heaven) often shines too hot, or too dim.



And summer is fleeting: its appointment is too short, and it leads to the withering of autumn, as every fair from fair sometime declines. The final quatrain of the sonnet tells how the beloved differs from the summer in that respect: his steady will last forever (Thy eternal summer shall not fade...) and never die. In the couplet, the speaker explains how the beloveds beauty will accomplish this feat, and not perish because it is preserved in the poem, which will last forever; it will live as long as men can breathe or eyes can see.

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