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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 the 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 ling lives this, and this gives life to thee
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In spring there are rough winds that spoil the blooming roses which are
very lovable
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[You are not comparable to a
summer’s you don’t have the negative qualities that a summer’s day has
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Sometimes, the sun
becomes dusky, (maybe) due to the cloudy sky
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They lose beauty, sometimes, accidentally and sometimes,
naturally by the law of this universe
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Death will not be able to kill you and take you to the underworld because you will keep
on growing in these lines
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Critical Appreciation:
“Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?” is the 18th sonnet of a long sequence of 154
sonnets composed by William Shakespeare, probably between 1595 – 1599
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The identity of this fortunate youth is
still doubtful
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Whatever may be the
identity of the young man in the poem, it is evident that the speaker of the poem concentrates on
the physical beauty of the addressee in the Elizabethan tradition
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Its fourteen lines are divided in three quatrains and a couplet
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In Britain, a day in summer is famous for its bright
sunshine, beauty and charm
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To the speaker, his friend first appears as
radiant mirthful and charming as a day in summer
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The repeated use of the word “more” implies
glorification of the youth
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The doubt has been logically illustrated in the following lines
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Several images have been used to establish the fact
that the qualities of the friend are better than those of the summer’s day
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Moreover, its duration is short
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In the second quatrain, the speaker further argues logically in order to establish that his doubt is
right
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The beauty sun suddenly becomes very hot
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The speaker then generalizes that all beautiful things in
nature may be destroyed accidentally or by the law of nature
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In the third quatrain the speaker passes on to the positive qualities of the “fair youth”
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Death will never be able to defeat
him and enjoy proudly its win because the speaker has sheltered him in the immortal lines of this
poem
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This sonnet very
confidently says that the youth will continue to live with the same charming beauty as long as
human beings are on the surface of the earth
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A lyric is basically a musical composition
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The music in it has been created by regular beats of unaccented and accented
syllables in each foot
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For example, the first line ends with “ay” sound, which rhymes with the “ay” sound
at the end of the third line
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Thus, its rhyme scheme, abab cdcd efef gg, creates the music which is the
essence of a lyric
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This sonnet also has 14
iambic pentameter lines
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Each of these feet has an
unaccented syllable and an accented syllable
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The images are also well chosen
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The “rose” metaphor is skillfully humanized in the phrase “darling buds of May”
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“Summer’s lease” adds the concept of property so that its association
with flowers seems quite inevitable; “the eye of heaven” introduces a link between the
addressee and the higher spheres with equal ease
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This change has
been presented with the personification of “Death”
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The poet’s “eternal lines” will create the eternal summer, with classical evocations
of an earthy paradise, only if human race continues
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Shakespeare likes
other English sonneteers borrowed the Petrarchan sonnet form
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However, Shakespeare differs from Petrarchan
rhyme scheme
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But Shakespeare’s
rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg
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The words selected by Shakespeare are lucid, and easily managed to fit to the unaccented and
accented beats and to the particular rhyme scheme
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The smooth running lines of the poem reflect a playful movement
quite befitting to the playful tone of the poem
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