Name: ____________________________________________
English 8
William Shakespeares Sonnet 18
Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee to a summers day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Quatrain 1
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summers lease hath too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmd;
Quatrain 2
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance, or natures changing course untrimmd
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owst,
Quatrain 3
Nor shall death brag thou wanderst in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growst,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
Couplet
So long lives this, and gives life to thee.
Date: ____________
Romeo and Juliet
Line Summary
Shakespeare debating over whether or not he should
compare this person to a summers day
Thou = you
More temperate = gentle, restrained etc.
Your beauty is more perfect than the beauty of
summer
Personification winds shaking the flowers of the
early months of summer
Eventually flowers from spring die off when summer
begins
Summer is too short doesnt last very long
Quatrain 1 (Argument/main metaphor): The
person that Shakespeare is writing about is better
than summer
Eye of heaven = the sun
Sometimes the sun gets too overwhelming with heat-
overwhelmingly hot or too intense (not enjoyable)
His = sun (idea extended from the previous line)
Often times the sun goes away (cloud cover, sun goes
down at night) and is unpredictable and unreliable
Fair = beauty
All beautiful things lose perfection or beauty
Summer eventually ends and takes its beauty with it
Quatrain 2 (Example/Argument being built):
Summer isnt perfect and doesnt last forever - its
beauty fades
Thy = your
Unlike the summer, your beauty will never fade
Thou = you / owst = own
You will never lose the beauty that you possess
Personification - Death will not be able to brag about
taking you from this earth
When you die death cannot even take your beauty
(Readers question: How will this person remain
Beautiful even after he has died?)
As time goes by, you will live on forever in this poem
Quatrain 3 (Twist): You will always be beautiful
andyou will live on in this poem even after you die
As long as people are alive and living on this earth
This = poem
As long as this poem is still being read, you will live
on and be immortal.
Couplet (Summary): As long as people read
this poem you will live on and be remembered