In the final couplet, Shakespeare reaffirms these prevalent motifs of eternal life and beauty, in the hope that “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,” (13), the “lovely” (2) and “temperate” (2) nature of the subject will be immortalised in his verse. Here, the youth is no longer simply compared to summer, but instead is summer, metamorphosed into the poetic standard by which true beauty should be judged. In this paralleled contrast, the “fair” (7) subject surpasses the temporary existence of summer, with the volta “But thy eternal summer shall not fade,” (9) immortalising him in Shakespeare’s verse. First, the anaphoric repetition of “more”, “more lovely and more temperate” (2), elevates the youth’s idealistic beauty above the traditionally poetic beauty of summer, before summer becomes tainted with “rough winds” (3), a climate that is “too hot” (5) and a beauty with “too short a date” (4), “fade” with the changing of the seasons. Sonnet 18 undeniably exudes the speaker’s deep adoration and unwavering fascination for the “eternal” (9) beauty of the subject, commonly known as the “fair youth”, with the opening rhetorical question constructing an immediate comparison on “how to compare thee to a summer’s day?” (1). So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st: Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,Īnd every fair from fair sometime declines,īy chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,Īnd summer’s lease hath all too short a date Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? The precise identity of the male is unknown sparking much literary debate as to Shakespeare’s ambiguous reason, romantic, erotic or admirable, for such an overwhelmingly explicit affection towards the subject’s beauty. Interestingly, there is little known about the historical context of Shakespeare’s sonnets, yet it seems to be universally accepted by critics that the identity of the poem’s love interest, the subject that groups the sonnets 1-126, is a young man of high rank and, evidently, admirable beauty. The opening line, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (1), is immortalised in the memory of many literary enthusiasts immediately shaping the sonnet’s poetic structure as the comparative conceit between summer’s glorified “gold complexion'” (6) and the subject’s “fair” (7) and “eternal” (9) beauty. Published in 1609 in Shakespeare’s collection of 154 sonnets, Sonnet 18 is, arguably, the best known and most well-loved of all. Here, I will analyse the Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”.