Textuality » 4A Interacting
This sonnet follows the rules of the Elizabethan sonnet: it is composed by three quatrains and a rhyming couplet. The title makes me understand it belongs to a collection because it is part of the first line of the poem. The addressee of the poem is Mr. W. H., who is also called "the fair youth" . Readers do not know anything about this men because Shakespeare never described him. In this poem the fair youth is compared to summer, but W. H. won this comparing. Although summer is a beautiful season the poet prefers his lover. By his view point summer can be too short, rough and even dangerous when sun shines too much. on the other hand the man turns out to be more temperate, he lasts more then a season and so his beauty is eternal and it does not fade: he is better than summer in any sense
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 thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest 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.
William Shakespeare