Sonnet XVIII (Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?)

William Shakespeare’s Sonnet XVIII is a timeless celebration of beauty and love’s enduring power. The speaker begins by comparing the beloved to a summer’s day but quickly asserts that their beauty surpasses even the finest aspects of summer—untainted by its fleeting nature. Through masterful imagery and poetic elegance, Shakespeare immortalizes the beloved, promising that their essence will live on forever in the verses of the poem. It is a radiant tribute to love, art, and the eternal nature of beauty captured through words.

Sonnet XVIII (Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?) - William Shakespeare

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 dimmed; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st, Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest 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.