The Compliment That Outwits Time

“Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” — William Shakespeare (1564–1616), English

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 ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
    So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
    So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

About This Poem

The cleverest thing in this sonnet is the turn at “But” in line nine. Shakespeare spends the first eight lines cheerfully dismantling summer as a perfect comparison: the winds are rough, the heat is excessive, the sun disappears, and every beautiful thing eventually declines. Then he changes the rules. The beloved’s “eternal summer” will not survive because nature has suddenly become dependable; it will survive because the poem itself can carry it forward. That is a wonderfully bold piece of poetic engineering—and a useful reminder today: when you want to praise someone, don’t reach immediately for “perfect.” Name what fails, changes, or fades, then show what remains. Shakespeare’s compliment has lasted for four centuries because it is not sugary. It argues.

If You Liked This

Try Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73, which uses autumn, twilight, and a dying fire to make another startling claim about love: awareness of time running out can make affection burn more fiercely.