Sonnet 18

Sonnet 18 was the only sonnet I was familiar with when we started the Shakespeare sonnet unit. Here, Shakespeare is comparing the young man, as the first line reads, to a summer’s day. Shakespeare is essentially saying that his subject is flawless. He writes that summer days can be too hot and they aren’t always perfectly sunny, and therefore the young man is lovelier than a summer’s day. In line 9 of the sonnet, Shakespeare says “But thy eternal summer shall not fade”. I thought this to be a bit contradictory, because in previous sonnets (two and twelve) he writes that everything beautiful comes to an end, and nothing can survive the forces of time. Also, Shakespeare writes that the poem “gives life” to the young man and will essentially keep him alive forever. This is similar to how Shakespeare promised the young man he would live on, but he said he would achieve it by having children because he and his beauty would live on through his lineage.