Shall I compare thee to a summers day
Sonnet 18
William Shakespeare


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 wand'rest 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.

THE English(Shakespearean ) rhyme scheme

ABAB CDCD EFEF GG

It has three quatrains and couplet

It's almost love poem

Imitates actual speech or dialogue

The language of it is very dramatic ; the use of questions , commands and assertions to create sense of activity



It talks about the friendship between two friends
One friend compare his friend of the summer's day

Discussion 1
The normal or familiar describing is comparing the friend with a summer day and the eye of heaven '' sun''
The unfamiliar describing is temperate''''
Because lovely is beautiful and loveable but '' temperate''is more puzzling it's hint of moderate and sober
We see at the beginning Shakespeare started with familiar idea or expression and this idea developed to something complex and unfamiliar
It's started with summer , summer's day then developed to summer lease and eternal summer

The speaker started with comparing his friend with the summer day
He found his some of his friend's ways is more beautiful of summer because the '' summer lease''
He found his friend posses the eternal summer

Figures of speech
Repetition of summer
To show or emphasis the development of the idea and to show that his friend posses the eternal summer
Eternal line 9
The speaker tell that his friend will grow up to time
Eternal line 12
Pun
Eternal lines
Lines has double meaning
The descent from the one family to the next
The lines of poetry ; the lines of poetry will be celebrated eternally
The repetition of fair
In line 7 and line10
The repetition of ''f'' sounds too
To show that the friends ways is more beautiful than the summer and the summer lease very short but the fair friend will never loss his beauty
Imagery
Simile

The comparison between the friend and the summer

metaphor
the eye of heaven = sun
gold complexion= the sun became a
human face
the nature..un trimmed
the imagery of the light is continued which refers both to declines of beauty and the changing course of nature

fade and shade
hint to conditions of light or loss of light and can be seen as a way of giving form and coherence to the structure of the poem

the structure of the Shakespeare shall I compare thee with a summer day ?
it has fourteen rhymed lines
it has 1o syllables
seven pairs
they are tricky because we realized they are unbroken 14 lines rather than 8 lines (octave) and six lines( sestet) like the Italian sonnet
the turn ( volta) ; but
the metre ; it’s iambic pentameter sonnet
because the line that uses unstressed syllable followed by the stressed syllable called iambic
the rhyme scheme
ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
In the octave ; the sonnet reflects the short summer and the changing course
In the sestet ; completed to make something eternal by preserving images and thoughts of beauties.
In the first quatrain; the question is asked and answered
In the second quatrain; the theme of the beauty is asserted
In the third quatrain; the shift to the eternity idea
The closing couplet ; the preceded lines are summarized and explained

What make the sonnet coherent is;
The using of the conjunctions words '' and , but , nor''
The punctuations ,
The pause '' caesura''
The repetition of the phrase '' so long''
The ending with the word'' thee'' =you
talk about the friend that described in the preceded lines


brief examination of the sonnet
the sonnet weights against the claims of the passing times and nature changes
and the promise of lasting in the hearts and the minds of the listeners and readers

the sonnet compressed form includes ; rhymes , repetitions and punctuations embodied between two ideas ; the beauty of the nature and the beauty of the Art
the life and death
time and eternity

Shakespeare pronouns
Thee= you
Thou= you
Thy=your
Thy self= yourself
Thine=yours