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    Sonnet 18: Winds" in Them, The Sun ("The Eye of Heaven") Often Shines "Too Hot,"

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    احمد احمد
    Sonnet 18 praises a fair youth for their beauty. The speaker compares the youth to a summer's day but says their beauty is "more lovely and more temperate." All things must decline over time, but the poet promises the youth's beauty will be eternal and preserved in the sonnet for future generations to appreciate, thus cheating death through the immortalizing power of verse. The poem conveys that as long as people can read, both the sonnet and the fair youth's beauty will live on.

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    Sonnet 18: Winds" in Them, The Sun ("The Eye of Heaven") Often Shines "Too Hot,"

    Uploaded by

    احمد احمد
    39 views3 pages
    Sonnet 18 praises a fair youth for their beauty. The speaker compares the youth to a summer's day but says their beauty is "more lovely and more temperate." All things must decline over time, but the poet promises the youth's beauty will be eternal and preserved in the sonnet for future generations to appreciate, thus cheating death through the immortalizing power of verse. The poem conveys that as long as people can read, both the sonnet and the fair youth's beauty will live on.

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    Sonnet 18 praises a fair youth for their beauty. The speaker compares the youth to a summer's day but says their beauty is "more lovely and more temperate." All things must decline over time, but the poet promises the youth's beauty will be eternal and preserved in the sonnet for future generations to appreciate, thus cheating death through the immortalizing power of verse. The poem conveys that as long as people can read, both the sonnet and the fair youth's beauty will live on.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    39 views3 pages

    Sonnet 18: Winds" in Them, The Sun ("The Eye of Heaven") Often Shines "Too Hot,"

    Uploaded by

    احمد احمد
    Sonnet 18 praises a fair youth for their beauty. The speaker compares the youth to a summer's day but says their beauty is "more lovely and more temperate." All things must decline over time, but the poet promises the youth's beauty will be eternal and preserved in the sonnet for future generations to appreciate, thus cheating death through the immortalizing power of verse. The poem conveys that as long as people can read, both the sonnet and the fair youth's beauty will live on.

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    Sonnet 18

    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 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.

    "Sonnet 18" is devoted to praising a friend or lover, traditionally known


    as the "fair youth." The sonnet itself serves as a guarantee that this
    person's beauty will be sustained (preserved and immortalized). Even
    death will be silenced because the lines of the poem will be read by
    future generations, when speaker/poet and lover are no more( die)
    keeping their fair image alive through the power of verse.

    The speaker opens the poem with a question addressed to the


    lover: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”. The next eleven
    lines are devoted to such a comparison. In line 2, the speaker shows
    what mainly differentiates the beauty of the young man from the
    beauty of a summer’s day: he is “more lovely and more temperate.”
    Summer’s days tend toward extremes: they are shaken by “rough
    winds”; in them, the sun (“the eye of heaven”) often shines “too hot,”
    or too dim because of the clouds. And summer is fleeting: it has a
    1
    short time,( it starts with spring and ends with autumn and with it
    everything withers to declare the coming of winter ( the death of
    summer), as “every fair from fair sometime declines.” : (note the use
    of words that describe the summer season)‘dimmed’, ‘declines’, ‘fade’,
    ‘shade’.

    Having described the numerous flaws(defect imperfection) in the summer’s


    beauty, the speaker reflects on the nature of beauty in general. He says that every
    beautiful thing is destined to see a decline in its charm one day. The reason for
    this decline may vary, but the decline is guaranteed. Sometimes, it is the
    bearing of luck and chance, which results in the fading of prettiness. Other
    times, it is the working of time and nature, which brings old age. This way, no
    beautiful thing escapes the clutches of future decline.

    The final quatrain of the sonnet tells how the beloved differs from
    the summer in that respect: his beauty will last forever (“Thy eternal
    summer shall not fade...”) and never die. This concern with time itself
    increasingly occupies the poem—and becomes its central challenge
    as the speaker searches for a metaphor or simile that does not imply
    that his beloved will decay and die.

    In the couplet, the speaker explains how the beloved’s beauty will
    accomplish this feat((goal), and not perish (forgotten or die) because
    it is preserved in the poem, which will last forever; it will live “as long
    as men can breathe, or eyes can see.”
    The speaker states with a renewed assurance that "thy eternal
    summer shall not fade" and that his lover shall stay fair and even
    cheat death and time by becoming eternal.

    2
    An important theme of the sonnet is the power of the speaker’s
    poem to defy time and last forever, carrying the beauty of the
    beloved down to future generations. The beloved’s “eternal
    summer” shall not fade precisely because it is embodied in the
    sonnet: “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,” the speaker
    writes in the couplet, “So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”
    As long as men can read and breathe, his poem shall live on, and his
    lover, too, will live on, because he is the subject of this poem.

    Main themes:
    ADMIRATION(OF BEAUTY)

    CRUELTY OF NATURE

    INEVITABILITY OF DEATH

    POETRY AS A SOURCE OF IMMORTALITY

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