Celebrating Love, Beauty and Life

A tender and loving sonnet 18 by Shakespeare

Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
by 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 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 that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st 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.

Shakespeare compares his beloved to a summer's day, but his beloved is far better. A summer's day can be unpredictable and imperfect. Sometimes the weather is too hot, sometimes the sun hides behind clouds, and summer ends too quickly. Beauty in nature fades as time passes or by the random events of life, and nothing stays perfect forever except for the woman he loves. Shakespeare insists that the beauty of his beloved will not fade. Her "eternal summer," or the essence of her beauty, will remain. Even death cannot claim her completely because his poetry captures her beauty forever. If people can read his words and feel their meaning, the person he loves will live on through the sonnet. In this way, Shakespeare ensures immortality for the beauty of his beloved. The theme of this beautiful poem is the stability of love and its power to immortalize someone.