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 owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest 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.
Sonnet 18, also known as "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?", is one of the most famous sonnets written by William Shakespeare. It is part of a collection of 154 sonnets that Shakespeare wrote, which were first published in 1609.
The sonnet begins with the speaker asking a rhetorical question: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" The speaker then proceeds to answer his own question, saying that the person he is addressing is "more lovely and more temperate" than a summer day. This is because summer days can be too hot, too short, and too fleeting, while the person's beauty and qualities are everlasting.
In the second quatrain, the speaker describes how the beauty of summer fades and how all things in nature are subject to change and decay. He contrasts this with the person he is addressing, whose "eternal summer shall not fade" and whose "possession shall not fade."
In the third quatrain, the speaker describes the power of poetry to preserve the beauty and qualities of the person he is addressing. He says that as long as people can read and appreciate poetry, the person's beauty and qualities will live on.
The sonnet concludes with a rhyming couplet that emphasizes the idea that the person's beauty will last forever through the power of poetry: "So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."
Overall, Sonnet 18 is a celebration of the enduring power of love and poetry. The speaker compares the person he is addressing to the beauty of nature, but ultimately concludes that their beauty and qualities are far more remarkable and everlasting than anything found in the natural world. The poem is often interpreted as a tribute to the power of art to immortalize the beauty of human beings.