SONNET XVIII

The sonnet start with a rhetorical question, the poet asks him if he have to compare you (thee) to a summer’s day. From the first line the reader could understand the sonnet maybe tells about a person, which is important for him in comparison to a summer’s day.

Considering the layout the intelligent reader understands that the text is a sonnet. It is structured in 3 quatrains and one couplet. The rhyme scheme is ABAB, CC in the couplet. It is a Shakespearean sonnet.

The poet shows the reader three different point of view of his problem and the couplet tells a possible solution.

The poet chose the summer to make the comparison because is the best season, and he uses it for have an idealized view of the man (thee) who he is talking about.

In the first quatrain the poet uses the semantic feels of the nature. He lists all what have the summer of positive.

In the second quatrain he refers to summer elements which are not beautiful (Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines), this to show that the mystery man is better than summer. He uses a hyperbaton (“every fair from fair sometime declines”).

In the third quartein the speaking voice tells you the mystery man is mortal being, so the poet is afraid of the passage of time. Here the reader notes lots of words referring to the semantic feel of the time like eternal when.

In couplet the poet writes two verses that make the man eternal. For give this idea of everlasting he refers to the sense of sight. The rhetorical figure he uses is anaphora (“So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”)