Identifying the Tone of Shakespeare's 'Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?'

The poem “The Widow’s Lament in Springtime” is a poem about a women who has lost her husband of thirty five years. Williams writes in the voice of a grieving woman instead of in his own voice. Now that her husband has died, the widow cannot find joy in her yard that she used to love. The widow may even be considering suicide. Williams, writing in free verse, writes a metaphor comparing the grief of a widow to her blooming yard in the springtime setting a tone of great sadness for the widow.

Summer by Josiah Conder , is describe as an a completely opposite Summer than the one everyone is familiar with. When thinking of the summer, thoughts of heat, vacation, and fun are usually associated with it. Conder describes the Summer as being a miserable time, where the skies are gray and gloomy. The sonnet itself is English/Shakespearean model which makes it easier for Conder to express different ideas in each quatrain but still relate them. Also Conder was a poet during the Romantic era where any feeling could be expressed towards anything. And that is what Conder does when describing the Summer. In the poem the speaker is having a conversation with no one , while they describe the Summer. Conder uses diction, imagery, alliteration and metaphor to help convey the idea that the Summer is not as fun and appealing.

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (“Sonnet 18”) is one of Shakespeare’s most famous poems. It is the model English, or Shakespearean sonnet: it contains three quatrains and a finishing couplet.. The poem follows the traditional English sonnet form by having the octet introduce an idea or set up the poem, and the sestet beginning with a volta, or turn in perspective. In the octet of Sonnet 18, Shakespeare poses the question “Shall I compare the to a summer’s day” and basically begins to describe all the bad qualities of summer. He says it’s too windy, too short, too hot, and too cloudy. Eventually fall is going to come and take away all the beauty because of the changes nature brings. In the sestet, however, his tone changes as he begins to talk about his beloved’s “eternal summer” (Shakespeare line 9). This is where the turn takes place in the poem. Unlike the summer, their beauty will never fade. Not even death can stop their beauty for, according to Shakespeare, as long as people can read this poem, his lover’s beauty will continue to live. Shakespeare believes that his art is more powerful than any season and that in it beauty can be permanent.

Through isolating that line, it not only emphasises its importance as a statement, with ‘summer’ being a metaphor for his son, and thus showing pure paternal love; but also the importance of the new tone, pride. The word ‘But’, although with negative connotations, is used to positively emphasise the importance of the new phase of acceptance of his son’s death, and the continuation of his paternal love. It is through this line that Shakespeare goes on to explain how his love for his son will never diminish, as it is immortalised, along with his son, in the poem. This is the act of creating an autotelic memorial in that the poem will never fade away, ever when the writer dies. Due to this, Shakespeare is able to show that his concept of love, no matter what form it is in, is so strong and true that it is infinite and can overcome all obstacles, even death itself. To a 16th century reader, the concept of love taking many forms and overcoming even death was unconventional, as it contrasted greatly to the accepted ideal of courtly love, which was limited and weak. To a modern day reader, whose greatest fear is death; being told love overcomes death reassures them of its strength. This promotes Shakespeare’s ideology, especially through contrast in the

In “All Summer in a Day”, the authority figure is the nine-year-old schoolboy William. The dark story takes place on Venus, where it rains constantly and only one hour of sunlight is witnessed every seven years. The students who live on Venus are unaware of the joy that the sun can potentially bring to them because they were not old enough to appreciate it during its last appearance seven years ago. Young Margot moved from Ohio to Venus five years ago. Therefore, she had recently experienced the sun and even had the ability to properly describe it in her poem as “a flower, that blooms for just one hour.”

In Patricia Engle’s review of Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I Could Not Stop For Death”, Engle argues that Dickinson’s poem employs Death as a lover who takes whomever is reading the poem to “heaven”, if you will. She also posits the idea that our eventual death is just a state of mind and we do not all follow the same path to reach Death. The poem, at its core, is about the visceral fear of Death and not wanting to die. I disagree with Engle’s assessment. Engle’s take on Dickinson’s poem is an inaccurate one because it explains that Dickinson does not seem to be afraid of death, that Dickinson is very spiritually aware and even accepting of her eventual fate, and that Dickinson, or the speaker of the poem, has accepted death so he has “stopped” for her.

When she first talks about winter, she says that “Thus in winter stands a lonely tree,” (9). When referring to winter, it is the season of death. The speaker is realizing that her days left is slowly approaching an end. She then turns and references summer, “I only know that summer sang in me” (13), and “that in me sings no more” (14). As she is talking about summer, she is also talking about her memories of herself when she was young. This corresponds with the seasons because in summer things are new and want to be experienced however, in winter this is the season when everything is dying and no one wants to be a part of it. The speaker can feel this happening to herself because she sees herself as winter, and she longs to be like summer again. In the summer stage of her life, she is youthful, and she has men aching to be around her. However, now that she has approached the winter stage of her life she is feeling strong feelings of regret. Thus, this shows how she feels about herself by showing how she talks about winter and summer and how it compares to the sorrow in her life

In Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death “ (448), the speaker of the poem is a woman who relates about a situation after her death. The speaker personifies death as a polite and considerate gentleman who takes her in a carriage for a romantic journey; however, at the end of this poem, she finishes her expedition realizing that she has died many years ago.

“Because I could not stop for Death-” is the more famous of Dickinson’s works. The poem is her attempt to visualize the process of actually being dead. As a narrative, the unknown Speaker of the poem describes how the literalized manifestation known as Death “kindly stopped of me-”. Death picks the Speaker up in a carriage and they ride away together – “The Carriage held but just Ourselves — And Immortality.” In this way, Death has been compared to both a suitor and a seducer for the speaker. After all, the Speaker did not actually choose to die and was not even contemplating the end of life. Rather, Death chose the Speaker. The suiter/seducer interpretation provides a double-meaning wherein can be viewed as both the natural progression of life and also the destructive violation of it. Immortality is the third person

There are certain themes and ideas which appear over and over again in literature, no matter what the genre or form. Poems which were written centuries apart can echo similar ideas about life and humanity. Love is one such theme which presents itself repeatedly as seen in the poetry of William Shakespeare and that of Robert Burns. Each poem, though written more than two hundred years apart, explains what it feels like for the poet to feel love for the singular object of their affection. The poem "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day" by Shakespeare and Burns' "A Red, Red Rose" share common images and themes with the intention of instilling in the reader the impression of their love and in explaining the depth of their emotion for the beloved as well as the respective poets ideas about the very nature of love and how it can be both passionately fulfilling and devastating.

According to Hut (2011), the expression, “untrimmed” in line eight, could be taken two courses: First, in the feeling of misfortune of enhancement and ornaments, and second, in the feeling of untrimmed cruises on a boat. In the first translation, the lyric peruses que lovely things characteristically lose Their extravagance about whether. The “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.” In the second, it peruses que nature is a boat with sails not conformed to wind changes keeping in mind the end goal to revise course. This, in consolidation with the words “nature’s evolving course,” makes an interesting expression: the constant nature of progress, or collegues que just thing does not change will be change. This line in the lyric makes a movement from the impermanence of the initial eight lines, into the unfathomable length of time of the last six. Both change and forever are Acknowledged and afterward tested by the end line (Kennedy & Gioia, 2010).

He says summer is far too short, because in summer the flowers will bloom. If he compares her to a flower she´ll bloom in summer and die after summer, as will her love.

for the whole poem which he compares his love as a summer’s day. In lines 5-6 we see another

Shakespeare uses two powerful metaphors in line five and in line six to compare the summer's imperfections to the perfection of the beloved. In line five he uses a metaphor "Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines" to describe that in the summer the sun gets to hot and this is yet another imperfection of a summer day which the beloved is superior to. Although some may compare there beloveds eyes with the glow or beauty of "the eye of heaven" here the speaker has chosen to claim the opposite saying that the sun is inferior to his beloved in that her eyes are more beautiful. In line six of the poem the idea of the sun being imperfect is further enhanced by phrase "gold complexion dimmed" this is implying that the sun is imperfect in that it is not always hot enough. Here the speaker implies that the beloved is flawless in that her complexion is never changed, remaining "gold" like. Nature that surrounds us is beautiful, the trees, ocean, and the wild life, and although the speaker makes a point to disfigure the view of nature the intention of the poet is to reinforce the beauty of the beloved.

The poem starts with a description of how the beauty of a woman is like the night, which is quite an odd way to say that she was beautiful. Normally a woman’s beauty would be compared to a summer’s day, like another former author have written, Sonnet 18 by Williams Shakespeare as an example. Although, in this poem, instead of being compared to a normal night, she is compared to a cloudless night with millions of shining stars. I suppose it means she has a lovely and clear complexion? Her beauty is therefore not only her appearance; the cloudless night might as well refer to her personality, a conscience clear as the cloudless sky. This woman was not only a