"Shall I compare" is the 18th of the collection of sonnets of W. Shakespeare.

In the sonnet, Shakespeare addresses the fair youth, and the sonnetier's apparent aim is to find something to compare his beauty with.

The sonnet is made up of three quatrains and a rhyming couplet.

In the quatrains, the poet tells the reader the problems he meets trying to compare the faur youth's beauty with the summer (the season that has always been used as a point of reference to describe the youth).

The first reasons why the poet does not compare him with a summer day is because of summer's really hot temperature and lack of balance, that the young man has. Summer's winds are rough and violent (they risk to ruin the tiny buds) and, anyway, summer lasts for a too shotr time.

The first two lines of the second quatrain end the description of summer, repeating that is too hot and the sun often looses its brightness during this period. The poet uses a personification of the sky, referring to its colour as a complexion and to the sun as an eye. The personification marks the transition between a list of drawbacks of the summer and the meditation about the effects of the time on the beauty of the things. The change of topic is underlined from the repetition of the word "fair" two times in verse 7. The poet focuses the reader's attention on the run of the time, the shortness and transience of the beauty (as the one of the season).

The third quatrain underlines the main reason why the poet can not compare the young man's beauty with the summer: the poet wants his beauty to be eternal, never fade. He considers it as a possession of the man (as shown by the use of words like "lose", "possesion" and "ow'st", belonging to the semantic fiel of economy). The last verse of the quatrain anticipate the resolution suggested in the last stanza.

The last stanza offers the poets resolution to the problem: the youth's beauty will last forever because his sonnets will hand it over for the eternity. And until somebody will be able to see the sonnet, this will give him life.

The rhyme scheme of the sonnet is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The alternate rhymes help to connect words that have a common background.

In the first stanza, the rhyme day-May recalls the beauty of the summer, while the one made up the words temperate-date refers to the first two drawbacks of the season the author underlines (its excessive temperature and its shortness).

In the second quatrain, the verb "to decline" refears to the beauty, represented from the brightness of the sun (from this the rhyme shines-declines), while the words dimmed-untrimmed are linked from their negative effects on the beauty (of the season and the human beings).

In the third stanza, the words fade-shade strongly recall each other, referring to the semantic field of the death (also quoted in the text at verse 11). On the other hand, the rhyme ow'st-grow'st highlights the wishes of the sonnetier for the youth's beauty to be eternal, last forever.

The rhyming couplet (see-thee) is the explanation of Shakespeare's solution to the problem. The verb "to see" is put is key position, because it is the necessary element for Shakespeare's plan to work: until somebody even only sees the sonnet, the youth's memory will last forever.