DESERT ISLAND POEM 8

SONNET 18

by William Shakespeare

In terms of the Shakespearean sonnet this is by far the most revered and one of the most widely read poems in the canon of English literature. This is hardly surprising.

What skill the Bard displays from the beginning - dismissing the notion of comparing his muse, his perception of perfection, to a mere summer's day in the opening quatrain and then outlining the sun's imperfections in the second.

 

As he strives to strengthen his argument in the turn he gets a little carried away by claiming the beauty of his beloved is as eternal as his poetry. He then reels himself back in for the final couplet to declare that her beauty will remain for as long as men walk the Earth; thus concluding that mankind is ultimately mortal.

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It's beautiful, breathtaking and brilliant.
 

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 wandrest 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.