Shakespeare's Sonnets1

[ROMEO]

Shill I compare thee...



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.

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PARAPHRASE



Shall I compare you to a summer's day?

You are more lovely and more delightful

Rough winds shake the much loved buds of May

And summer is far too short

At times the sun is too hot


Or often goes behind the clouds

And everything that is beautiful will lose its beauty

By chance or by nature's planned out course

But your youth shall not fade

Nor lose the beauty that you possess

Nor will death claim you for his own,

Because in my eternal verse you will live forever

So long as there are people on this earth

So long will this poem live on, giving you immortality

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ANALYSIS




[Line 9]* - The friend's 'summer' or 'prime of life' will remain eternal because the poet immortalizes her in verse. Lines 10-14 confirm this reading.

[Line 12]* - Because of the poet's verse the friend will actually grow as one with time ("to time thou growest"). imagery,.

It is perhaps the best known and most well-loved of all 154 poems. It is also one of the most straightforward in language and intent. The stability of love and its power to immortalize the poetry and the subject of that poetry is the theme. The poet starts the praise of his dear friend without ostentation, but he slowly builds the image of his friend into that of a perfect being. His friend is first compared to summer in the octave, but, at the start of the third quatrain (9), he is summer, and thus, he has metamorphosed into the standard by which true beauty can and should be judged. The poet's only answer to such profound joy and beauty is to ensure that his friend be forever in human memory, saved from the ultimate oblivion that accompanies death. He achieves this through his verse, believing that, as history writes itself, his friend will become one with time (or, more informally, keep up to time). The couplet reaffirms the poet's hope that as long as there is breath in mankind, his poetry too will live on, and ensure the immortality of his muse




By the Legendary W.Shakespeare



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