Sonnet 18

    Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

    The best-known poem in the English language — memorized by schoolchildren for centuries and quoted at more weddings than any other Shakespeare text.

    beauty
    immortality
    poetry
    time
    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.

    What It Means

    Shakespeare opens with what sounds like a compliment and immediately turns it into something more complex. Yes, he'll compare his friend to summer — but summer loses. Summer is too short, too rough, and unreliable. His friend is more temperate, more lovely, more consistent. The real turn comes in the sestet. It doesn't matter whether summer continues; this poem will. 'So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.' The poem is the argument. By writing it, Shakespeare is doing exactly what he promises — making his subject live forever. It's a statement of artistic confidence as much as a love poem.

    Context

    Part of the Fair Youth sequence (18–126), widely considered the most famous of all 154 sonnets. Published in the 1609 quarto. The sonnets were likely written in the 1590s.

    Buy the Arden edition of the Sonnets on Amazon →

    As an Amazon Associate, ShakespeareGo earns from qualifying purchases.

    Previous← Sonnet 17Who will believe my verse in time to come,NextSonnet 19 →Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws,
    ← All 154 sonnets