“Sonnet 18” may be the most famous lyric poem in English. Among Shakespeare’s works, only lines such as “To be or not to be” and “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” are better-known. On the surface, this poem is a statement of praise about the beauty of the speaker’s love interest, but when you look closely you can see how the speaker is actually praising himself for his skills. This is also Shakespeare’s first poem in the sonnets that doesn’t explicitly encourage having children. The procreation sequence of the first seventeen sonnets ended with the speaker’s realization that the they might not need children to preserve beauty, but he could also live “in my rhyme” as he says in Sonnet 17. Sonnet 18 is the first poem in which the speaker first attempts to preserve the beauty for all time, and is also a perfect example of classic Shakespearean style of writing and usage of metaphors. This poem uses several different metaphors, personification, multiple themes, and follows a traditional form to get across the point to the reader that the speaker is a well skilled and masterful poet. Four strong themes in this poem are change, fate, love, and eternity. At first glance, the poem appears as if the speaker is praising and complimenting his lover, but through closer examination you can see that the speakers main focus is showing how good of a writer he is. Images and symbols of time, decay, and eternity are in this poem because whether or not we think the lover is
Poetry can help authors bring forward many different emotions through just the themes that they choose to deliver. Some poets show their sadness, disgust, unashamedly talk about their romantic relationships, and most of the time love. Poets can change the entire poem just by the mood that they set, the tone that they are using, or the imagery that they use to describe. Shakespeare is a big example of using different themes, tones and imagery. In three of his sonnets they deal with romantic love and they have been very widely popular throughout many years even though some of his writing can be hard to decipher.
“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.
Two themes the poem has is death and time. The poem displays the theme of time, because it starts out telling the story of a man who is from, and raises his children in, a noble and rich family. As his children get older, 2 of them died, and the others, to quote the poem “all were gone, or broken-winged or devoured by life”. He had lost, essentially all of his children, and as we find out his wife. The poem shows how he went from a great man with a happy family, to a lost man who is all alone. The next theme the poem shows is death. Death is all throughout the poem. It starts with a man living a good life, but as it goes on his first child leaves, his next 2 children die, and the next 3 become incredibly unsocial and that’s not even it! Near the end his wife, the mother of all 6 children, dies. “I sat under my cedar tree, till ninety years were tolled.” The poem ends with the man dying, after everything he had lost; he died in his favorite place to be, under his cedar tree.
In “Sonnet II,” by Millay, the speaker describes how time has gone on and she still misses her former boyfriend. Similar to that, in “Sonnet 73,” by Shakespeare, the speaker describes how time has gone on, taking his youth away. Overall, through the use of gloomy imagery and a dreary tone, Shakespeare and Millay present time’s negative effects on a person, within their dismal sonnets.
The second sonnet continues the argument and plea from sonnet one. This time through the imagery of military, winter, and commerce. Once again, time is the great enemy, besieging the youth’s brow, digging trenches in his face and ravaging his good looks. Beauty is conceived of as a treasure that decays unless, through love, its natural increase. By marrying and having children is made possible. The poet tries to scare the young man to marry and have children by showing him his future. When he is forty years old he will be nothing but a “tatter’d weed, of small worth held” because he will be alone and childless. The only thing that the young will have to look back for is his self-absorbed “Lusty days,” empty because
Shakespeare is known for praising both men and women for their humanly beauty, but this sonnet is one that stands out from that crowd because not only is the famed William Shakespeare praising a man for his beauty, but an old man none the less. This xonnet the best example of Shakespeare’s love because it has sexual diversity, a grand respect for old age, and a love that lasts for an eternity.
The lover is described as "more temperate" in line 2 and therefore less prone to vary between extremes.
The poem I chose to do was Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare. When I first read it, a couple of things stood out to me, such as, how the narrator is comparing someone (maybe a lover or friend) to a summer’s day. The narrator then proceeds to tell the person how “Thou art more lovely and more temperate,” which means that they are more beautiful and gentle than a summer day might be. It goes on saying how the person is not rough like the wind or too hot like the “eye of heaven,” which is the sun, that is sometimes dimmed by clouds.
Ultimately, Shakespeare expresses his own feelings and opinions through the sonnet. His usage of language techniques helps him do so. Love is shown to be not only a quality, but it is personified as a perfect, unchanging thing, unaffected by time. Shakespeare has really proved himself to be a prolific writer and extraordinarily capable poet as result of this
has the gentle heart of a woman but is not inconsistent as is the way
Sonnet 73 is a meditation on mortality, and yet it can be interpreted in a number of ways. The first such interpretation is that the author of the poem is speaking to someone else about his own death that will inevitably come in the future. This interpretation has the poem focused on the author, and his focus and concern over himself. This makes him seem very selfish, because we are all going to die sooner or later, and it does not do any good to dwell on or complain about it. The only use that this interpretation really has is to evoke pity in the author, or the speaker of the Sonnet.
The Sonnet 18 “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day “ is around the most admired and prominent of the 154 poems of William Shakespeare . Most researchers concur that the true recipient of the lyric, the mate of pleasant toward oneself, whom the artist is composing, is a man, however the sonnet is generally used to portray a lady. In the piece, the pleasant toward oneself contrasts his adoration with a June through August, and contends that his affection is superior to summer (Kennedy & Gioia). He additionally states that your beau will live everlastingly through the expressions of the lyric. Researchers have discovered parallels between this poem and sonnets Tristia and Amores of Ovid . A few interpretations have uncovered
Shakespeare’s sonnet 60 expresses the inevitable end that comes with time and uses this dark truth to express his hopefulness that his poetry will carry his beloved’s beauty and worth into the future in some way so that it may never die. This love poem is, as all sonnets are, fourteen lines. Three quatrains form these fourteen lines, and each quatrain consists of two lines. Furthermore, the last two lines that follow these quatrains are known as the couplet. This sonnet has the rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, as most Shakespearean sonnets follow. In each of the three quatrains, Shakespeare discusses a different idea. In this particular sonnet, the idea is how time continues to pass on, causing everything to die. The couplet connects these ideas to one central theme, this theme being Shakespeare’s hope for the beauty of his beloved’s immortality through his poetry’s continuation into future times.
During the Renaissance period, most poets were writing love poems about their lovers/mistresses. The poets of this time often compared love to high, unrealistic, and unattainable beauty. Shakespeare, in his sonnet 18, continues the tradition of his time by comparing the speakers' love/mistress to the summer time of the year. It is during this time of the year that the flowers and the nature that surround them are at there peak for beauty. The theme of the poem is to show the speakers true interpretation of beauty. Beauties worst enemy is time and although beauty might fade it can still live on through a person's memory or words of a poem. The speaker realizes that beauty, like the subject of the poem, will remain perfect not in the
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (Line 1). “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” (Line 1). These are both two of the famous lines from William Shakespeare’s sonnet 18 and 130. William Shakespeare was an intelligent English playwright, poet, and dramatist during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. He is known as one of the greatest playwrights of all time. Sonnet 18 and 130 are two of Shakespeare’s most famous poems. Sonnet 18 is a love poem about how he compares the woman’s love to a summer’s day. Sonnet 130 has a different approach. It is still a comparison, but it seems to be a more spiteful one. These sonnets are both share similar subjects, imagery, theme, and rhyme scheme; however they are more so different in forms and purpose.