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Shall I Compare The to a Summer’s Day?
By William 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 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.
About the Poem
If I had to choose a favorite sonnet, it would be this one. I have loved Sonnet 18 since I was a student, and it became one of my favorite poems to teach. It is one of those rare works that is both beautifully written and remarkably accessible. Even readers who are intimidated by Shakespeare often find themselves drawn into its simple but profound central idea.
Most people remember the opening line, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” But the poem is not really about comparing someone to summer. In fact, Shakespeare quickly argues that summer is an inadequate comparison. Summer is unpredictable. It can be too hot, too windy, or too brief. Every beautiful thing eventually fades.
The person addressed in the poem, however, will not.
Of course, Shakespeare does not mean that his beloved will never grow old or die. Instead, he makes a bold claim about the power of poetry itself. Through these “eternal lines,” the beloved’s beauty is preserved. As long as people continue to read the poem, the beloved continues to live in the imagination of each new generation.
There is also another reason this sonnet has remained meaningful to many LGBTQ+ readers. Although Shakespeare never identifies the beloved’s gender within the poem itself, Sonnet 18 is part of the collection commonly known as the Fair Youth sequence. These sonnets are addressed to a young man, making them among the most famous expressions of affection between men in English literature. Whether one interprets them as romantic, platonic, or deliberately ambiguous, they remind us that love, admiration, and beauty have always existed in many forms throughout history.
More than four hundred years later, Shakespeare’s prediction has proven true. Countless generations have read these lines, memorized them, taught them, and fallen in love with them. His beloved remains immortal—not because time stood still, but because great art can outlast time itself.
Sonnet 18 was first published in 1609 as part of Shakespeare’s collection of 154 sonnets. It is written in the traditional Shakespearean sonnet form: fourteen lines of iambic pentameter with the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.
The poem begins as a comparison between the beloved and a summer’s day but quickly overturns the comparison by arguing that nature’s beauty is temporary. The closing couplet delivers one of the most famous conclusions in English literature, asserting that poetry grants a kind of immortality by preserving beauty across generations.
Today, Sonnet 18 remains one of the best-known and most frequently taught poems in the English language.
About the Poet
William Shakespeare is widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language. Born in 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, he wrote approximately thirty-nine plays, 154 sonnets, and several narrative poems.
His works explore timeless themes of love, ambition, jealousy, forgiveness, mortality, and the complexity of human nature. Four centuries after his death, Shakespeare’s plays continue to be performed around the world, and his poetry remains a cornerstone of English literature.
The sonnets, in particular, have inspired generations of readers because of their emotional depth and enduring questions about beauty, love, time, and memory. Among them, Sonnet 18 stands as perhaps the clearest expression of Shakespeare’s belief that while human life is fleeting, great poetry has the power to preserve what we cherish long after we are gone.
