1. Sonnet 18

2. Text 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 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.

3. Form: Shakespearean sonnet
Theme: You can immortalize things with writing and other works of art.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

4. Analysis Figurative language
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
The speaker then subverts this comparison by listing negative things about summer: it is too short and too hot
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;
Because of these things “Thou art more lovely and more temperate”, and the beloved has a summer that will last forever.
Death is a proud personality who brags.
Common in literature
Language of borrowing and lending
“summer’s lease”
“Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;”
Ow’st could be interpreted as either own or owe. This suggests that beauty is something borrowed that eventually has to be given back.

5. Analysis There is also this imagery of a growing plant.
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st
The shift comes at the ninth line:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade, which contrasts the eternal summer with the physical, temporary summer.

6. A trivia fact
Many scholars think this sonnet was addressed to a male.