FULL ANALYSIS ON SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO A SUMMERS DAY?-William Shakespeare

This poem was written by William Shakespeare to praise an object which critics suppose was his lover. The poem raises the object above the height of comparison, stating that its beauty is above all and is eternal.

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.

This poem is a Shakespearean sonnet following the abab cdcd efef gg format. It has three quatrain and one rhyming couplet.

In the first stanza, Shakespeare compares its object of admiration to summers day which appears in may an finds it only too unworthy for as a season, it changes and last for a short time.

The second stanza compares the object to the eye of heaven which is the sun but finds it to be unworthy because its gold complexion is often dimmed when the sun sets. Every fair from fair means the beautiful ones and the poem personae says it declines by natures changing course which is degeneration.

In the third and fourth stanza, the personae makes it known that the characteristics found in  the object will never fade neither will it loose its beauty. Death is said to be incapable of laying its icy hands on the object because it has been written in lines that will be seen eternally, so long as men can breathe and eyes can see projecting that people will always read about the object of admiration and it will be made immortal through that.

 

summer’s day

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