Shakespeare Sonnet 18

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 ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st 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. 

This is one of the young man sonnets, so the love interest is most likely the man. The narrator could also be giving advice about love. The first quatrain compares the young man to a summer day, saying he is lovely and fair, but he doesn’t last. The second quatrain builds upon this by explaining that sometimes the sun, aka the young man, is too bright and other times he fades. I saw the last quatrain as the main point of this poem. The young man will last forever. He will not fade. Even Death won’t get in the way. Of course, this is typical of most sonnets. Much like other sonnets, this sonnet also deals with love lasting over time. The coda is “eyes.” It links back to the second quatrain in which the eye of heaven, the sun, shines. In the couplet, the eye belongs to a human. The coda is the third quatrain summarized. As long as men exist, love will last. This is, again, typical of sonnets, which usually concern love. The significance of being compared to summer and to the sun and then to an eternal summer is the heat. Summer is hot; it is dull and drags on. On the other hand, summer is also the fun, light season. Thus, the connotation of summer could be negative. That is likely why the narrator says, “thou art more lovely and more temperate.” Basically, he is summer, but less extreme. I think it is interesting that this is a young man sonnet, however. The sonnet seems to be written romantically. It is about love. This makes me wonder if there was a love triangle in which the narrator, later on, loves both the woman and the young man. This also makes me wonder who Shakespeare was. Who was the man that loved a man who loved a woman, and then also loved that woman? It’s a confusing triangle, and it might be fictional, but I still wonder.