Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day?
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.
Sonnet 18: Translation to modern English
Shall I compare you to a summer’s day? You are more lovely and more moderate: Harsh winds disturb the delicate buds of May, and summer doesn’t last long enough. Sometimes the sun is too hot, and its golden face is often dimmed by clouds. All beautiful things eventually become less beautiful, either by the experiences of life or by the passing of time. But your eternal beauty won’t fade, nor lose any of its quality. And you will never die, as you will live on in my enduring poetry. As long as there are people still alive to read poems this sonnet will live, and you will live in it.
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15 Responses to Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day?
Dear Shakespeare,
I enjoyed sonnet 18, and it was pretty good. Some of the kids have trouble counting to 14 and listening to instructions, but that is probably left over from elementary school when they didn’t learn their numbers to begin with. Anyhow, we enjoy reading your literature and it is a welcome break from the non-stop talking that the group in the corner is doing. Dear God, maybe they will take the hint and shut up!!!
I am a highschool kid and my sonnents are absoluty incredible! But I do not know how to spread these sonnents so that I will have the recognition. I just wish somebody could help….:(
Gather them all together and publish a book!
The sonnet translation is so helpful! Now, I understand the poem.
hey guys
just wanted to point out a secret in the real poem.
on lines 11 and 12, if you count the syllables, they are greater than 10
and the rest of the lines only have 10 syllables. Why do u think this is so?
In the original, those lines are written as
Ow’st and Grow’st in order to scan correctly.
love it
Loved this, and so did my 14 year old students. Just wrote a blog post about it if interested. http://www.fraudulentteacher.blogspot.com
Cheers.
Thanks Fraudster – glad you and your students liked it! Nice blog piece yourself
it is the most romantic thing i have ever heard shakespeare knew what is was talking about !! i can only imange what a lucky person that shakespeare wrote in this sonnet !! :’D
is this poem about a girl or a boy because i am lead to believe that this poem ia about William Shakespeare’s boyfriend. Is this true?
William Shakespeare’s boyfriend? it is talking about a girl.
it was a very nice sonnet none the less
The supposed ‘boyfriend’ is William Herbert, son of the legendary Earl of Pembroke
it is not true. it is for a girl!!!!!!!!!
William Shakespeare wrote a few sonnets for girls and what life was like in england
No, most of Shakespeare’s Sonnet’s were actually written to William Herbet, his boyfriend. Sonnet’s 1-about 80 are all to William Herbert, and from about 80 and up are all to an unknown woman. Shakespeare was Bi sexual.