Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?
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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 tho owst, Nor shall Death brag thou wandrest in his shade When in eternal lines to time thou growst: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. |
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Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
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Shall I compare you to a summer's day?
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Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
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You are more lovely and more tempered or moderate and therefore more pleasing in your moods and in your emotional 'weather' than a summer day:
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Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
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The lovely early blossom buds of an early summer day in May get shaken by rough winds...
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And summer's lease hath all too short a date;
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...and summer itself is all too short: the date here is an expiration date and so a lease that has a short date is a short lease.
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Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
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Sometimes the sun shines too hot...
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And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
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...and often also the golden face of the sun is obscured, for example by clouds...
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And every fair from fair sometime declines,
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...and everything that is beautiful will at some point lose this beauty...
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By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed.
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...cut down to its unadorned bare or barren state of old age by the vagaries of chance and accident or simply but the ever-changing weather and seasons.
Something that is 'trimmed' is decorated, so a beautiful summer day is 'trimmed' with beautiful flowers, for example, where as once it has been 'untrimmed' then these adornments have been taken away, as happens to every summer day and to every living thing. |
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But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
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But your summer will be eternal not fade and thus come to an end...
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Nor lose possession of that fair thou owst,
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...nor will it – your eternal summer and therefore by extension you – lose that beauty which you own.
Note that 'owst' does not mean something that you owe, but something that you own, it's a contraction of 'ownest'. |
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Nor shall death brag thou wandrest in his shade
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Nor shall Death – who is again here personified – ever be able to brag or boast that he has you walking behind him in his shade, meaning that he, death, owns you because you are dead...
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When in eternal lines to time thou growst.
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...when you grow towards the future – time – in the eternal lines of my verse, because:
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So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
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for as long as men – for which read all human beings – are alive on this planet and therefore able to breathe and their eyes can see and are therefore able to read...
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So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
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...this sonnet here that I have written for your will live and endure and it is this sonnet that makes you live forever.
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