Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day? (Sonnet 18) Poem by William Shakespeare

Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day? (Sonnet 18)

Rating: 4.3


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.

Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day? (Sonnet 18)
COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Fabrizio Frosini 12 December 2015

in ITALIAN: « Posso paragonarti a un giorno d'Estate? Tu sei più amabile e più tranquillo. Venti forti scuotono i teneri germogli di Maggio, E il corso dell'estate ha fin troppo presto una fine. Talvolta troppo caldo splende l'occhio del cielo, E spesso la sua pelle dorata s'oscura; Ed ogni cosa bella la bellezza talora declina, spogliata per caso o per il mutevole corso della natura. Ma la tua eterna estate non dovrà svanire, Né perder la bellezza che possiedi, Né dovrà la morte farsi vanto che tu vaghi nella sua ombra, Quando in eterni versi nel tempo tu crescerai: Finché uomini respireranno o occhi potran vedere, Queste parole vivranno, e daranno vita a te. »

147 14 Reply
Fabrizio Frosini 05 January 2016

Sonnet 18 is the best known and most well-loved of all 154 sonnets. It is also one of the most straightforward in language and intent. The stability of love and its power to immortalize the subject of the poet's verse is the theme. [BTW.. A sonnet is in verse form and has fourteen lines of iambic pentameter. Shakespeare's sonnets follow the pattern abab cdcd efef gg, and Petrarch's sonnets follow the pattern abba abba cdecde. All the lines in iambic pentameter have five feet, consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one.]

120 20 Reply
Kevin Straw 27 October 2012

There are two near-blasphemous claims in this sonnet. The first is that the Youth’s beauty is equal to that of the glorified body that Catholics believe all will possess after death, and the second is that the Poet’s verse can sustain that heavenly state, even defeating death itself. But in the final couplet Shakespeare comes to his senses to say that this paradisal state will last only “So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see…”. This is not the only time in The Sonnets that Shakespeare flirts with blasphemous thoughts in his attempts to praise the Youth.

20 66 Reply
Matthew Turner 02 September 2015

That was so dope.... Im just kidding it was the worst poem in history dudeee...

13 41 Reply
Matthew Turner 02 September 2015

dude that was so harsh

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Chinedu Dike 26 January 2022

A poetic creation of the highest calibre........

0 0 Reply
Ramesh T A 26 January 2022

Shakespeare's Sonnet is the model for many of my creative Poems here since a long time!

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MAHTAB BANGALEE 26 January 2022

Natural beauty is non-comparable always. nature can live long and the beautiful eyes see the beauty always

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me poet yeps poet 09 May 2021

HIS BEST SONNET GRADED AS 4.3 ONLY SOMEONE UPGRADE IT PLEASE

0 0 Reply
Dr Dillip K Swain 09 May 2021

Timeless..................

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