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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One of the most famous
of Shakespearean sonnets and it can be regarded as the most famous lyric poem
in English of all time.
William Shakespeare
compared his friend with summer in the octave and finally concluded (in the
Couplet) that summer may lose their beauty by chance or nature but a friend is
eternal. He starts the poem with a question of comparison. “Shall I compare you
to a summer’s day? He is lovelier and more moderate than summer.
Stormy winds shake the soft buds of May become the reason for the vanishing of
summer’s beauty, summer does not long enough. Sometimes the sun shines too hot
and his golden face dimmed by the cloud. Sometimes the most beautiful things
lose their beauty either by some unforeseen circumstances or nature’s course
change but a friend is forever and never loses the beauty because friendship is
eternal. The poet personified the death with lifelessness and brag that even
death cannot end the relationship between friends. Beauty never perishes
because it is preserved in the poem, which will last forever, as long as a
human eye opens. The poet highlighted the usefulness of art in this sonnet
which is immortal.
