He continues in lines 5-6, where he lingers on the imperfections of the summer sun. He begins in lines 3-4, where "rough winds" are an unwelcome extreme and the shortness of summer is its disappointment. The poet describes summer as a season of extremes and disappointments. Also note that May (line 3) was an early summer month in Shakespeare's time, because England did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1752. Here the theme of the ravages of time again predominates we see it especially in line 7, where the poet speaks of the inevitable mortality of beauty: "And every fair from fair sometime declines." But the fair lord's is of another sort, for it "shall not fade" - the poet is eternalizing the fair lord's beauty in his verse, in these "eternal lines." Note the financial imagery ("summer's lease") and the use of anaphora (the repetition of opening words) in lines 6-7, 10-11, and 13-14. The first two quatrains focus on the fair lord's beauty: the poet attempts to compare it to a summer's day, but shows that there can be no such comparison, since the fair lord's timeless beauty far surpasses that of the fleeting, inconstant season. The gender of the addressee is not explicit, but this is the first sonnet after the so-called "procreation sonnets" (sonnets 1-17), i.e., it apparently marks the place where the poet has abandoned his earlier push to persuade the fair lord to have a child. Sonnet 18 is arguably the most famous of the sonnets, its opening line competitive with "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" in the long list of Shakespeare's quotable quotations. "So long as men can breathe or eyes can see / So long lives this and this gives life to thee."įor as long as people can breathe and see, this sonnet will live on, and you (and your beauty) with it.
Nor will Death boast that you wander in his shadow, since you shall grow with time through these sonnets: "Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade / When in eternal lines to time thou growest:" "But thy eternal summer shall not fade / Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest "īut your eternal beauty (or youth) will not fade, nor will your beauty by lost "And every fair from fair sometime declines / By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd "Īnd everything that is beautiful eventually loses its beauty, whether by chance or by the uncontrollable course of nature
Sometimes the sun is far too hot, and often it is too cool, dimmed by clouds and shade "Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines / And often is his gold complexion dimm'd " Summer's beauty is fragile and can be shaken, and summertime fades away all too quickly:
"Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May / And summer's lease hath all too short a date:" What if I were to compare you to a summer day? You are lovelier and more temperate (the perfect temperature): "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? / Thou art more lovely and more temperate:"
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