Sonnet 18意思

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 sequence of 154 sonnets that Shakespeare wrote, which were first published in a collection in 1609. Sonnet 18 is particularly renowned for its treatment of the theme of immortality through poetry.

Here is the text of 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 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.

The sonnet begins with the speaker asking a rhetorical question, comparing the beloved to a summer's day. The speaker quickly asserts that the beloved is superior, being more temperate and lovely. The summer's day is described as having rough winds that shake the buds of May, and its beauty is fleeting, lasting only for a short time.

The speaker then contrasts this with the beloved, whose beauty will not fade and will not be diminished by the passage of time or the changing of the seasons. The speaker promises that through the power of the sonnet, the beloved's beauty will be immortalized and will live on forever.

The final couplet is particularly powerful, asserting that as long as people are able to see and breathe, the sonnet will live on, and in doing so, it will give life to the beloved, ensuring their immortality.

Overall, Sonnet 18 is a celebration of love and poetry's ability to transcend time and death, offering a form of immortality to the one who is loved.