Sonnet 18

By William Shakespeare

“Sonnet 18” is William Shakespeare’s 1609 love sonnet that compares a beloved to a summer’s day and promises that the poem will keep that beauty alive forever. It is the 18th of the 154 sonnets first printed in Shake-speares Sonnets, and its 14 lines open with one of the most quoted questions in English: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

Our reading: this is a love poem that never describes its beloved. The real hero is the poem itself, and its final boast came true in a strange way, since the verse survived and the young man’s name did not.

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Summary · The Poem · Background · Analysis and Themes · Form and Technique · Notable Lines · Themes · FAQ
Glossary · In Popular Culture · Related Poems

Summary

The speaker asks whether he should compare his beloved to a summer’s day, then decides the comparison falls short. Summer is too windy, too short, sometimes too hot, and sometimes clouded over, and every beautiful thing fades in time. The beloved, he says, is lovelier and more even-tempered than any summer.

At line 9, the poem turns: the beloved’s “eternal summer” will never fade, and not even Death will claim him, because he will live on in these lines. The closing couplet makes the promise plain: as long as people are alive to read, the poem will survive and keep the beloved alive with it.

The Poem

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 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.

Background

Shakespeare’s sonnets circulated in manuscript long before they were printed. In 1598, the writer Francis Meres mentioned Shakespeare’s “sugred sonnets” shared among his private friends, and two of them appeared in the anthology The Passionate Pilgrim in 1599. The full sequence of 154 sonnets was published in 1609 as Shake-speares Sonnets, printed for Thomas Thorpe with a famously puzzling dedication to “Mr. W. H.” No one knows exactly when “Sonnet 18” was written, but most scholars place the bulk of the sonnets in the 1590s.

Sonnets 1 to 126 are traditionally read as addressed to a young man, often called the Fair Youth, and Sonnets 127 to 154 to a woman known as the Dark Lady. The first 17 sonnets urge the young man to marry and have children so that his beauty will survive him. “Sonnet 18” is the first to offer a different kind of survival: not through children, but through poetry. Our text follows the 1609 Quarto in modern spelling, keeping its elisions such as “dimm’d” and “ow’st.”

For a line-by-line reading of the sonnet and a guide to the young man behind the sequence, see Sonnet 18 on WShakespeare.com and its guide to the Fair Youth sonnets.

Analysis and Themes

“Sonnet 18” is usually read as the perfect compliment. Look closely, though, and the compliment is oddly empty, while the poem’s praise of itself grows louder with every line. That shift, from praising a person to praising poetry, is what makes the sonnet more than a valentine.

The Comparison He Refuses

The poem opens by offering a simile and then taking it back. Summer is the obvious image for youth and beauty, but the speaker finds fault with it at once: its winds are rough, its heat is harsh, and its sun is often clouded. He even uses the language of property to describe it. Summer holds only a “lease,” and that lease has “all too short a date,” as if the season were a tenant about to be evicted.

A Love Poem Without a Face

For a poem so famous for its praise, “Sonnet 18” tells us almost nothing about the beloved. We learn no eye color, no hair, no voice, and no name. The only direct praise is that he is “more lovely and more temperate,” and even that is defined against summer. Most of the poem’s vivid detail goes to the weather. The beloved is less a person here than a blank space the poem promises to fill.

The Real Subject Is the Poem

At the turn in line 9, the speaker stops talking about seasons and starts talking about verse. The beloved will escape decay “in eternal lines,” a phrase that means lines of poetry and also suggests a family line, the kind of survival the earlier sonnets recommended. By the couplet, the key word is “this,” repeated twice: the poem itself. It is “this” that lives, and “this” that gives life. The beloved survives only as a guest inside the sonnet.

A Promise That Came Half True

The final boast has proved remarkably accurate. More than four hundred years later, people still breathe, and eyes still see, and the poem still lives. The irony is that the person it promised to preserve has vanished. Scholars still argue over who the young man was. What survives is not his face or his name, but Shakespeare’s description of a summer’s day and his claim that poetry outlasts everything.

Form and Technique

The poem is a Shakespearean sonnet: 14 lines in three quatrains and a closing couplet, rhymed ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. It is written in iambic pentameter, five beats to a line, and the last line scans with almost perfect regularity: “so LONG lives THIS, and THIS gives LIFE to THEE.” The steady beat suits the poem’s claim to permanence.

The turn, or volta, comes with “But” at line 9, where the poem moves from summer’s flaws to the beloved’s eternal summer. Shakespeare personifies the sun as “the eye of heaven” with a “gold complexion,” and Death as a braggart who cannot claim this prize. He also plays on the word “fair,” which in line 7 means both a beautiful thing and beauty itself. The legal and financial words “lease,” “date,” and “ow’st” (owns) frame beauty as something borrowed that must one day be returned.

Notable Lines

Four passages trace the poem’s move from praising a person to praising poetry.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Lines 1 to 2

The famous question is really a setup. The speaker raises the comparison only to reject it, and “temperate” (mild and even-tempered) is the first hint that he values steadiness over brilliance.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Lines 3 to 4

Beauty is fragile and rented. The “darling buds” are shaken before they bloom, and summer itself is a tenant on a short lease.

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:

Lines 9 to 12

The turn. Three confident negatives (shall not, nor, nor) deny time its victory, and “eternal lines” reveals where the beloved’s summer will actually be kept.

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Lines 13 to 14

The couplet stakes everything on readers. The poem lives only while someone reads it, so every reading, including yours, keeps the promise.

Themes

Time and decay. Everything in nature fades, from May buds to the summer sun. The poem’s first eight lines are a catalog of loss.

Poetry as immortality. Verse is the one thing the speaker believes can defeat time. The poem claims for itself the permanence that summer, beauty, and even the beloved lack.

Love and praise. The sonnet is an act of devotion, but its praise is general and idealized. It celebrates beauty in the abstract more than a particular person.

The limits of comparison. The poem shows how hard it is to describe what we love. Every image falls short, so the speaker ends by praising the words instead.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions readers most often ask about Shakespeare’s most famous sonnet.

What Is Sonnet 18 About?

It is about a speaker who compares his beloved to a summer’s day and finds the beloved lovelier and more lasting. He argues that summer and beauty fade, but that the poem will keep the beloved alive for as long as people read it.

What Is the Theme of Sonnet 18?

The main theme is the power of poetry to preserve beauty against time. The sonnet also deals with love, the fragility of natural beauty, and the defeat of death through art.

When Was Sonnet 18 Written?

No one knows the exact date, but it was probably written in the 1590s. It was first published in 1609 in Shake-speares Sonnets.

Is Sonnet 18 About a Man?

Most likely, yes. The poem never states the beloved’s gender, but it belongs to Sonnets 1 to 126, which are traditionally read as addressed to a young man known as the Fair Youth.

Is Sonnet 18 Written in Iambic Pentameter?

Yes. Each of its 14 lines has five beats, mostly in iambs (an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one), as in “so LONG lives THIS, and THIS gives LIFE to THEE.”

Glossary

• temperate (line 2): Mild, moderate, and even-tempered, never too hot or too cold.
• lease (line 4): A rental agreement for a fixed period, here the short time summer is allowed to last.
• date (line 4): The end date of a lease or contract.
• eye of heaven (line 5): The sun.
• fair (line 7): A beautiful thing, and in its second use, beauty itself.
• untrimm’d (line 8): Stripped of its beauty, like a ship’s sails or a dress left without trimming.
• ow’st (line 10): Own, possess.
• eternal lines (line 12): Lines of poetry, with a hint of a family line of descent.

In Popular Culture

When Love Speaks (2002): Bryan Ferry sang “Sonnet 18” in a setting arranged by the composer Michael Kamen on this EMI Classics album of Shakespeare’s sonnets, recorded in support of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

David Gilmour (2002): The Pink Floyd guitarist recorded his own version of the sonnet and sang it at the album’s benefit concert at the Old Vic in London in February 2002. The performance was later included on his DVD David Gilmour in Concert.

Related Poems

• Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare: The mirror image of Sonnet 18, a love poem that mocks exactly this kind of flattering comparison.
• Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare: Another sonnet that sets love against time, defining true love as the thing that does not change.
• Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare: The speaker turns the seasons on himself, comparing his own age to late autumn.
• Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley: A darker answer to Shakespeare’s boast, in which art outlives its subject but mocks him in the process.