Sonnet 18 is easily one of the most easily recognizable poems in literature. The speaker begins the first line of the sonnet with a proposal: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” and proceeds to spend the rest of the sonnet answering the question. The first quatrain simply says that the subject is better than summer; summer has imperfections that the listener does not. The second quatrain goes in depth about the flaws of nature. The sun can be too hot, sometimes it’s cloudy, and nothing that is beautiful is ever preserved. The third quatrain goes back to addressing the subject, telling them that they do not share the flaws of summer. The summer inside of them won’t fade, they won’t lose they beauty, and death will not deafeat them – because now their memory is captured within the lines of this poem. The couplet ends the sonnet by further commenting that as long as men are alive, the subject will forever live on through the verses in this sonnet – which they indeed have.
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