Sonnet 18

"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."

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (18:1). The poet answers his rhetorical introduction by saying no; it is the poem itself, when it comes to life by being read that best carries out a clear and exalted and paradisiacal image about the one the poet is addressing, “thee”, “thou”, “thy“.

By saying “Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade” (18:11) the poet seems to claim that since the death is a state of nonexistence it can nor express, nor emphasise. Thus the earthly dead comparative material become irrelevant and insignificant; it can never be any question of a parable.

“So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” (18:14). The vivid memory of someone is the eternal; the offspring of the poem comes to life the moment it is being read. The poet seems to refer to the magic of reading which brings an otherwise impossible comparison to life, an anthem to the beauty.