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Shall I Compare Thee by William Shakespeare

Analysis

"Shall I Compare Thee" is a poem written by William Shakespeare. This poem, actually called "Sonnet 18" is perhaps Shakespeare's most quoted sonnet. The poem simply speaks of how beautiful his love is. He is saying his lover is "more lovely and more temperate" than summer and that his lover's beauty won't fade because "When in eternal lines to time thou growest".

"Sonnet 18" is a Shakespearean Sonnet. This means that it is composed of fourteen lines written in iambic-pentameter and it has the rhyme scheme of ABABCDCDEFEFGG.

Poem

Sonnet 18
By 

Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?
Thou are 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 ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st 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.
Next: Sonnet 1

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Nationality
English

Literary Movement
Renaissance, 16th Century

Subjects
Sonnet, Beauty, Love, Relationship, Summer, Time