This sonnet by William Shakespeare compares a person to a beautiful summer day. In the sonnet the person is not described in the most flattering of ways while Shakespeare praises himself for immortalising her on paper expecting the person to eventually pass away. Shakespeare is very straightforward with his language and intent here. The poet starts by praising the person but not pretentiously and the compare’s him/her to a lovely summer day but from the third quatrain the poet say’s he is summer and he set’s himself as the standard for beauty and perfection. After the Volta (but, line 9) the poem takes a turn and the poet comes off as conceited and goes on an ego trip. The author says that nature will take its course and the person will eventually reach death’s door and become someone in the past but says this person will be immortalised through this sonnet and live on forever. This sonnet is not a declaration of love and praise for this person but its praise for the sonnet itself for being immortal and great enough to carry someone else and itself into the future on paper.

THE SONNET –

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? A

Thou art more lovely and more temperate: B

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, A

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date; B

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, C

And often is his gold complexion dimm’d; D

And every fair from fair sometime declines, C

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d; D

But thy eternal summer shall not fade, E

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st; F

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade, E

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st: F

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, G

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. G