Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare: poem analysis & meaning

Sonnet 18 the full poem, lines numbered

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:

5Sometime 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,

10Nor 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.

The poem in 60 seconds

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” is probably the most quoted first line in English love poetry. The answer turns out to be no: summer is too windy, too hot and too short. Watch where the praise quietly changes subject. By the last line the sonnet is boasting less about the beloved than about the power of the poem itself.

The speaker opens with a question: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” He decides the beloved is lovelier and more temperate, meaning more even and mild. Summer has faults. Rough winds shake the buds of May, and summer’s lease, the time it is allowed, runs out too soon. Sometimes the sun, the “eye of heaven,” shines too hot, and often its golden face is dimmed by cloud. Every beautiful thing loses its beauty in time, by accident or by nature’s normal course of change. Then the poem turns. The beloved’s “eternal summer” will not fade, nor lose the beauty the beloved owns, and Death will not be able to boast that the beloved wanders in his shadow. The reason is that the beloved grows into time in “eternal lines,” the lines of this poem. As long as people can breathe or eyes can see, the poem will live, and it will give life to the beloved.

Speaker & situation

SpeakerA lover and a poet, speaking in the first person. The speaker is often identified with Shakespeare, but it is safer to treat the voice as a speaker, since readers disagree about how personal the sonnets are.

Addressed toA listener called “thou,” never named or described, and the poem never says whether this person is a man or a woman. As the sonnet is usually read, it belongs to Sonnets 1 to 126, which many readers take to concern a young man, though Sonnet 18 itself does not say so.

OccasionNo event is named. In the 1609 collection this sonnet follows a run of seventeen sonnets that urge the listener to marry and have children so that his beauty lives on. Sonnet 18 offers a different way to outlast time: the poem itself. The date it was written is not known.

ToneAdmiring and playful in the first eight lines, as the speaker finds fault with summer. From line 9 the tone grows confident, and by the couplet it is openly proud.

Form & sound

FormShakespearean sonnet; three quatrains and a closing couplet, fourteen lines in all, printed here as a single block.

MeterIambic pentameter, five beats to a line. Line 3 begins with two heavy stresses, “Rough winds,” so the line itself seems to shake before it settles into the regular beat.

Rhyme schemeABAB CDCD EFEF GG: day / May, temperate / date, shines / declines, dimm’d / untrimm’d, fade / shade, ow’st / grow’st, and the couplet see / thee. The temperate / date pair rhymes only on the unstressed last syllable of “temperate,” a light rhyme next to the others.

StructureLines 1 to 8 list what is wrong with summer and end on a general law: every beautiful thing fades. Line 9 turns with “But” to the beloved’s “eternal summer.” The couplet explains how that can be true: the poem keeps it alive.

SoundThe couplet repeats its opening words, “So long as” and “So long lives,” and line 14 repeats “this,” so the poem ends by pointing twice at itself.

Line by line what each part says and does

1

Lines 1–4

The question

The speaker asks whether he should compare the beloved to a summer’s day. The beloved is lovelier and more temperate. Rough winds shake the buds of May, and summer’s lease is far too short.

How it worksThe poem sets up a standard compliment and then refuses it by finding fault with summer. “Lease” and “date” are legal words, as if summer were a rented property with an end date written into the contract.
2

Lines 5–8

Summer’s faults

Sometimes the sun, the “eye of heaven,” is too hot, and often its golden face is dimmed. Every beautiful thing loses its beauty at some point, by accident or by nature’s changing course.

How it worksThe complaints about summer widen into a rule about all beauty. Line 7 uses “fair” twice in two senses, a beautiful thing and its beauty, which makes the loss sound built in.
3

Lines 9–12

An eternal summer

The beloved’s “eternal summer” will not fade or lose the beauty the beloved owns. Death will not boast that the beloved wanders in his shade, because the beloved grows into time in “eternal lines.”

How it worksThe turn comes with “But.” The legal language of line 4 returns as “possession” and “ow’st” (owns), and now the lease never runs out. The “eternal lines” are the lines of the poem.
4

Lines 13–14

So long lives this

As long as people can breathe or eyes can see, this poem will live, and it gives life to the beloved.

How it works“This” is the poem the reader is holding. The couplet makes the reader part of the proof: each new reading keeps the promise.

The turn

Lines 9

Lines 1 to 8 explain why summer is a poor comparison and end with the rule that all beauty fades. Line 9 turns with “But thy eternal summer shall not fade,” and the poem moves from the weakness of summer to the strength of verse, which the couplet names outright.

Literary devices with line numbers

Rhetorical question

In line 1 the speaker asks whether to compare the beloved to a summer’s day. He answers at once in line 2, and the rest of the octave explains why the comparison falls short, so the question works as the poem’s starting problem.

Personification

In line 5 the sun is the “eye of heaven,” and line 6 gives it a “gold complexion,” a face. In line 11 Death is a boaster who would like to brag that the beloved walks in his shade. Both figures make time and death sound like rivals the speaker can beat.

Extended metaphor of ownership

Line 4 says summer’s “lease” has too short a “date,” the language of a rental agreement. Line 10 answers with “possession” and “ow’st” (owns): the beloved’s beauty is owned outright, not rented.

Wordplay on “fair”

In line 7, “every fair from fair sometime declines” uses “fair” first for a beautiful person or thing and then for beauty itself. Line 10 picks the word up again, “that fair thou ow’st,” to claim that this one beauty will not be lost.

Anaphora

Lines 13 and 14 both begin “So long.” The repetition ties the poem’s life to the life of its readers: while there are people to breathe and see, “So long lives this.”

Volta

The turn at line 9 is marked by “But.” It swings the poem from summer, which ends, to an “eternal summer,” which does not, and it sets up the couplet’s answer.

Themes in Sonnet 18

Poetry against timeBeauty that fadesPraise and its limits

Poetry against time

The poem admits that every beautiful thing declines (line 7), then claims one exception: beauty written into “eternal lines” (line 12). Its real boast is about what writing can preserve.

Beauty that fades

Summer is lovely, but it is too hot, too cloudy, too windy and too short. The octave treats change as the normal course of nature, which is exactly what the speaker says the poem can escape.

Praise and its limits

The speaker sets out to praise the beloved and finds that ordinary comparisons are not good enough. The sonnet is a love poem that also asks what kind of praise can last.

Images and symbols

The summer’s day

Summer stands for the peak of beauty and life, which is also brief. The beloved’s “eternal summer” in line 9 is beauty kept at its peak by the poem.

The eye of heaven

The sun in lines 5 and 6 stands for nature’s greatest beauty, and even it is sometimes too hot and sometimes hidden. If the sun is flawed, no natural comparison can do the beloved justice.

Death’s shade

In line 11 death has a “shade,” a shadow the dead wander in. Many readers hear an echo of the “valley of the shadow of death” in Psalm 23. The poem promises that the beloved will never be seen there.

Tensions

Beauty vs. time. Everything in the first eight lines is slowly losing to time. The poem sets itself against that loss and claims, in the couplet, that it has won.

The ending

How Sonnet 18 ends, explained

The couplet answers the question the octave raised: how can any beauty escape the rule that “every fair from fair sometime declines”? The answer is the poem. “So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” The word “this” points to the sonnet itself, so the ending is a claim about poetry as much as about love. As long as people read the lines, the beloved lives in them. The plain reading takes this as a lover’s generous promise, and it has partly come true, since the poem is still read four centuries later. A second reading notices how much of the final praise goes to the poet’s own work. The beloved is never described: we learn nothing of eyes, hair or voice. What survives is the poem’s praise, not the person, and some readers find the boast a little self-regarding. A third reading hears the promise against the sonnets that come before it in the 1609 collection, which urge the listener to have children. Here the speaker offers a different kind of heir, the poem, in place of a child.

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

Line 1. The famous opening sets up a standard compliment as a question, and the rest of the octave shows why the speaker rejects it.

“Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,”

Line 3. The first fault the speaker finds with summer. The heavy stresses of “Rough winds” make the line itself sound shaken.

“But thy eternal summer shall not fade,”

Line 9. The volta. The beloved gets a summer that does not end, the one thing the octave said nature cannot offer.

“So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

Lines 13–14. “This” is the poem. The couplet claims that the poem will live as long as there are readers, and that it will keep the beloved alive with it.

Common misreadings

MythThe poem is addressed to a woman.

ActuallySonnet 18 never says who “thou” is or gives the person a gender. It sits among Sonnets 1 to 126, which many readers take to concern a young man, though that link comes from the sequence as a whole, not from this poem.

MythThe speaker promises the beloved will never grow old or die.

ActuallyThe promise is that the beloved’s beauty will live on in the poem. Line 12 locates the “eternal summer” in “eternal lines,” and line 14 says “this,” the poem, gives life to the beloved.

MythThe poem compares the beloved to summer and finds them alike.

ActuallyIt raises the comparison in line 1 and rejects it in line 2: the beloved is “more lovely and more temperate.” Lines 3 to 8 list the ways summer falls short.

AP practice a poetry prompt in the exam's style

In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, a speaker considers comparing the beloved to a summer’s day and ends by praising the power of the poem itself. Read the poem carefully, then write an essay that analyzes how Shakespeare uses literary elements and techniques to convey a complex perspective on beauty, time and poetry.

What a strong response notices

The opening question in line 1 and how lines 2–8 turn a compliment into a list of summer’s faults.
The legal language of “lease” and “date” in line 4, answered by “possession” and “ow’st” in line 10.
The personification of the sun as the “eye of heaven” in lines 5–6 and of Death as a boaster in line 11.
The volta at line 9 and the phrase “eternal lines” in line 12, where the subject shifts from the beloved to the poem.
The anaphora of “So long” in lines 13–14 and how the word “this” makes the reader part of the poem’s promise.

Practice prompt written by StoryBites, not taken from a College Board exam. See the AP Literature free-response guide for how answers are scored.

Test yourself

1. Why does the speaker say the beloved is better than a summer’s day?

2. What is the “eye of heaven” in line 5?

3. Where does the sonnet turn?

4. What does “ow’st” mean in line 10?

5. In line 14, what does “this” refer to?

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Answer

Explain it like I’m 12

The poem starts with a question: should I say you are like a summer day? The speaker decides no, because you are even better. Summer has problems. It gets windy, it is sometimes too hot, and it ends too soon. Everything beautiful fades after a while. But the speaker says your beauty will never fade, because it is written in this poem. As long as people keep reading the poem, you will stay alive in it.

Compare & connect

Sonnet 130

William Shakespeare

Sonnet 18 praises by rejecting a comparison because it is not good enough. Sonnet 130 rejects comparisons because they are false, and it mocks the poets who use them.

Ozymandias

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Another sonnet about what lasts. Shelley shows a king’s statue broken by time, while Shakespeare claims that a poem can outlive its subject.

To His Coy Mistress

Andrew Marvell

Marvell’s speaker also knows beauty will not last, but instead of promising to preserve it he urges the beloved to seize the day.

Discussion and essay prompts:

💬 Discussion questions

What does Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day mean
What is Sonnet 18 about
Who is Sonnet 18 addressed to
How does Sonnet 18 explore the theme of poetry against time?
How does Sonnet 18 explore the theme of beauty that fades?
What is the central conflict in Sonnet 18, and how does it shape the ending?

✎ Essay prompts

Analyze how William Shakespeare develops the theme of poetry against time in Sonnet 18. Support your argument with specific evidence from the text.
Examine the significance of the summer’s day in Sonnet 18. What does it represent, and how does it deepen the work’s meaning?
How does William Shakespeare use rhetorical question to shape the reader’s experience of Sonnet 18?
Some readers assume that the poem is addressed to a woman. Argue for or against this interpretation, using evidence from the text.

Key questions students ask

What does Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day mean
What is Sonnet 18 about
Who is Sonnet 18 addressed to
Where is the volta in Sonnet 18
What does eternal lines mean in Sonnet 18
What is the rhyme scheme of Sonnet 18

Analysis is original StoryBites commentary. The poem is printed from Project Gutenberg’s modern-spelling text of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (first published in 1609), checked word by word against the page images of the 1609 printing. It is in the public domain.