Sonnet 18, William Shakespeare

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 owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest: 

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

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About the poet

William Shakespeare (23 April, 1594 : Stratford-on-Avon)

He studied at King Edward VI Grammar School in Stratford.

He learned Latin, a little Greek and read the Roman dramatics.

He married Anne Hathaway at age eighteen and had two daughters.

He is the greatest playwright in European literature. 

His first plays were the three parts of Henry VI. 

His last play, The Tempest, was written in 1611. 

He wrote some 37 plays, the best known sonnets in English and some long poems. 

Shakespeare's plays falls into three categories: 

Tragedies; Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and King Lear (his famous four), Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra (tragic love stories)

Comedies; e.g. Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Twelfth Night and The Tempest 
Histories; e.g. Richard II, Henry IV (two parts), Henry V, Richard III and Julius Caesar 

What is a sonnet?

A sonnet has 14 lines; made up of 3 quatrains and a concluding couplet. 

A quatrain has 14 lines and a couplet only has 2 lines.

Vocabulary

Thee : You

Thou : You

Art : Are

Temperate : Evenly-tempered; not overcome by passion.

Buds : Flowers or leaves that are not fully opened

Lease : A period of time given

Hath : has

The eye of heaven : the sun.

Dimm'd : not seen very clearly

Every fair from fair sometime declines : The beauty (fair) of everything beautiful (fair) will fade (declines).

Nature's changing course :Tthe natural changes age brings.

Untrimm'd : Unchecked

Thy : Your

That fair thou ow'st : That beauty you possess.

Interpretation

First Quatrain

The poem inquired if he should compare his beloved to a summer's day, who is more beautiful than everything and more perfect than summer.

Summer is always associated with flowers, sunshine, holidays. However, in May during the summer, the strong wind can blow hard on the buds of plants and the summer is too short a time.

Second Quatrain

In summer, the sun is sometimes too hot and it can hardly be seen. Beautiful things do not last forever because day will change into night, summer will be replaced by autumn, people will age, grow old and die. This is the way of nature.

Third Quatrain

His beloved's beauty will not fade nor will it ever be forgotten when people read the poem.

Concluding Couplet

As long as man is alive, people will have the beauty of his beloved known in the poem.

Messages

- Life is not forever and death awaits us anytime

- Our beloved is always beautiful in our eyes
- Beauty can be preserved in art or literature

- We can express our love to someone through many ways e.g. poems, songs

Poetic Devices
Metaphors

And summer's lease hath all too short a date

The summer is compared to a lease as though summer is rented out to earth for only a short period.

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd

The sun is known as the eye of heaven which shines because it looks like a golden eye looking at at earth, shining brightly.

When in eternal lines to time thou growest

Grafting is a technique used to join parts from two plants with cords so that they grow as one. Thus the beloved becomes immortal, grafted to time with the poet's cords (his "eternal lines"). 

Commentary

Sonnet 18 is the best known and most well-loved of all 154 sonnets. It is also one of the most straightforward in language and intent. The stability of love and its power to immortalize the poetry and the subject of that poetry is the theme.
The poet starts the praise of his dear friend without ostentation, but he slowly builds the image of his friend into that of a perfect being. His friend is first compared to summer in the octave, but, at the start of the third quatrain (9), he is summer, and thus, he has metamorphosed into the standard by which true beauty can and should be judged.
The poet's only answer to such profound joy and beauty is to ensure that his friend be forever in human memory, saved from the oblivion that accompanies death. He achieves this through his verse, believing that, as history writes itself, his friend will become one with time. The final couplet reaffirms the poet's hope that as long as there is breath in mankind, his poetry too will live on, and ensure the immortality of his muse.
Interestingly, not everyone is willing to accept the role of Sonnet 18 as the ultimate English love poem. As James Boyd-White puts it:

What kind of love does 'this' in fact give to 'thee'? We know nothing of the beloved’s form or height or hair or eyes or bearing, nothing of her character or mind, nothing of her at all, really. This 'love poem' is actually written not in praise of the beloved, as it seems, but in praise of itself. Death shall not brag, says the poet; the poet shall brag. This famous sonnet is on this view one long exercise in self-glorification, not a love poem at all; surely not suitable for earnest recitation at a wedding or anniversary party, or in a Valentine. (142)

Note that James Boyd-White refers to the beloved as "her", but it is almost universally accepted by scholars that the poet's love interest is a young man in sonnets 1-126. 

[http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/18detail.html]

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Paraphrase

Shall I compare you to a summer's day?
You are more lovely and more constant:
Rough winds shake the beloved buds of May
And summer is far too short:
At times the sun is too hot,
Or often goes behind the clouds;
And everything beautiful sometime will lose its beauty,
By misfortune or by nature's planned out course.
But your youth shall not fade,
Nor will you lose the beauty that you possess;
Nor will death claim you for his own,
Because in my eternal verse you will live forever.
So long as there are people on this earth,
So long will this poem live on, making you immortal.