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[welkins2139]

Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?


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 dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest 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.

William Shakespeare



I have trouble understanding the bold texts.

[CP]

Well, it's poetry, so there may be no single way to interpret any given part, and that can be a good thing. Next time you read this, it may be very different to you, revealing new truths and insights. At least you are reading the wonderful Shakespeare . . . .

Here are some meanings of the bold text. They are just for you to think about, then decide for yourself what the poetry means. It helps to read it several times, to try to get all the parts to make sense at once, and to hear the lovely cadence of the words.

"Thou art more lovely and more temperate":
You are lovelier than a summer's day and more mild than a summer's day.

"And summer's lease hath all too short a date":
Summer lasts only three months, and a summer's day is only a day long (but you are eternal).

"Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed":
Sometimes the sun is too hot, and often the sun is dimmed (by clouds or by night, perhaps; while you are constant and never too hot or too dim).

"And every fair from fair sometime declines":
Everything that is pretty at some point begins to lose its beauty (but not you).

"By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed":
What makes the pretty things / people decline in beauty may be chance / bad luck or the steady course of nature, the ravages of time. [The allusion to course untrimmed is to sailing.]

"When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st":
When you age from now to eternity.

I would have thought this line to give you trouble. Here is a modern translation:

"Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st" =
"And shall not lose possession of the beauty that you own"
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You live a new life for every new language you speak. -Czech proverb