Response on Sonnet 18

 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 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.

   

     Sonnet 18 is one of Shakespeare’s most famous sonnets. It is a sonnet dedicated to comparing a person that he loves to summer. As I read this sonnet, I was able to clearly comprehend what the meaning of the sonnet was.  I think that Shakespeare is trying to say that though she grows older and older, her beauty doesn’t change.

     The first example is from line 4 and 7.  I think that line four means that summer is too short. “Summer’s lease” mean summer’s span and “All too short a date” means too short. Line seven is saying that something that is beautiful can lose its beauty. What he means is that beauty from beauty sometimes declines. He is trying to say that the summer is too short and it loses its beauty.

     The other example is in lines 9 and 10. In line nine he is trying to say that her beauty will not be changed. You can tell by the word untrimmed. He is talking about her natural beauty will not be changed. Line ten is saying that she won’t lose her beauty. He uses the word summer to represent beauty, so he is saying that her beauty will last forever. He is saying that, unlike the summer, her beauty is eternal and will not fade away.

     This sonnet deserves to be his most memorable sonnet. I think Shakespeare wrote a wonderful sonnet that really shows his feelings towards this person. It may be write in old English, but the message is clear. The sonnet is not just trying to say that the person’s beauty will never fade; he is also trying to tell her that her beauty is a gift.