Shall I compare Thee to A Summer's Day?
             In Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, the narrator passionately begins to describe the beauty of his subject with enthusiasm and zeal. This lyric poem is a famous and brilliant sonnet that compares the subject's beauty to the transient beauty of nature. Sonnet 18 is arguably one of the best known and well-loved of all of Shakespeare's poems. Although the language is not heavy with alliteration or assonance like many of the Shakespearian sonnets, its simplicity and straightforwardness has help preserve the poem through the ages. The theme of this poem is the never fading beauty and preservation of a beloved through time. The sonnet utilizes many different literary elements such as structure, tone, and verse to express how the splendor and beauty of a person can live on through verse.
             Just as in all sonnets, the physical structure of the work plays a big part in how the theme of the poem is expressed. The speaker opens the poem with a question addressed to the beloved asking, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"(1) This is where the comparison of the beloved begins and the next eleven lines are devoted to such a comparison. In line two, the speaker stipulates what mainly differentiates the beloved from the summer's day by saying, "Though art more lovely and more temperate"(2). The narrator uses summer that is generally seen as beautiful to compare to the beloved in order to magnify the beloved even greater. The final quatrain of the sonnet tells how the beloved differs from the summer in that respect. The narrator says, "Thy eternal summer shall not fade"(9). This statement expresses the beauty the narrator sees in the beloved and also shows how he believes that beauty will never fade. In the final two lines, or the couplet, the speaker explains how the beloved's beauty will accomplish this feat, and not perish because it is preserved in the poem, which will last fore...