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William Shakespeare, SONNET XVIII

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.
5 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,
10 Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st 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.

Vocabulary

line
2 temperate of mild temperature
4 lease Frist
6 complexion colour
to dim to become dark because of clouds
7 fair beautiful (every fair thing declines from being fair sometimes)
8 untrimmed deprived, reduced
11 to brag to boast

Working with the text

1. Find out the rhyme scheme of the poem and write it down.
2. Can the poem be divided into parts/content units?
Name the lines and write down why there is a division. (The rhyme scheme might help you!)
3. What do "thee" (l.1), "thou" (l.2), "thy" (l.9) etc. refer to?
4. What does "this" (l.14) refer to?
5. Is there a climax in the poem? (Watch rhyme scheme!)
6. Try to express in your own words what the poet wants to say.