<p>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 owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st 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. </p>
<p>I saw this, and i was like: oh so it's guy loving a guy. so it has to be on homosexuality. they cannot get married about the time period prevents it. as a result, they live "long as men can breate" etc happily. I see teh eyes of god [yes i should have thought sun], and I thought oh, priests are on the earth sharing the message of god. as a result, the eye is the preist who dims the gold comlextion of the beloved [his smile]. the priests/church saddens the lover when they come to the church to talk about the af"fair" [i said fair was a contraction for affair], the church would just "decline" them. The summer refers to the time they spent trying to convince the church into getting married. however, they couldn't because society prevents it. eventually, writer decides that his beloved guy's "eternal summer shall not rage." i said summer is a metaphor for them trying hard to work on it. when summer stopped raging, they stopped trying to get a nuptual agreement. But they realize, even wtihout the marriage, they still don't "lose possession of that fair" they owest [owned];</p>
<p>Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, i considered teh church because they were the rough wind that tried to shake the darling buds [the relationship]</p>
<p>did i really screw up writing about that in my essay. I also spoke about the love the poet had for the guy, and how its more than a summer's day. </p>
<p>but yeah...did i fail, oris this a valid analysis</p>
<p>I’ve never had to analyze this sonnet for school, or any of Shakespeare’s sonnets for that matter. If the assignment was to go beyond the literal and instead analyze possible underlying interpretations then I think that you did pretty well. When I read the poem I interpret him as saying that compared to a summer’s day, his lover -whether the lover is male or female is up to the reader since no sex is explicitly stated- is more perfect and pleasing. The lover’s beauty and other physical and personality traits do not fade as the sun sometimes seems to do and summer eventually does. The lover’s perfection seems to last forever and even death seems to be incapable of diminishing any of the charming traits. I think that a “way out there” analysis is better than one that is too superficial. Hope that this helps and best of luck, we’ll be studying Hamlet and Othello soon in my English class!</p>
<p>Technically, any stance is viable, so long as you can provide adequate support. However…</p>
<p>I think you’re looking way to deep into this and explicating on things that aren’t there. This sonnet is indeed about the beauty of a male youth, but all of the events you described are rather far-fetched. The speaker is simply commenting (albeit very favorably) on the young man’s aesthetics. The major theme, I think, is that of a beautiful youth.</p>
<p>That’s just my opinion though. I don’t know how your teacher will see it.</p>
<p>This is how I view it:</p>
<p>It’s about loving a guy, and what Shakespeare is saying is that the guy is as great as a summer’s day, but a summer’s day has bad things (like it’s too short, sometimes it’s too hot) but that doesn’t apply to the guy. Also, the guy OWES his beauty to the world, and needs to reproduce so there are more like him. The rhyming couplet is saying as long as people are alive, this sonnet is going to live on. So Shakespeare was prophetic, because it’s true, this sonnet DID live on.</p>
<p>We read this in class YESTERDAY, haha.</p>
<p>But anyways, if you can back it up, then you should be good. There’s no RIGHT answer. The only way you can get a wrong answer is if you can’t back it up.</p>
<p>Wait…this is not about a male youth’s beauty. It could be, but theres actually no gender reference.
When it says “And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;” “he”=THE SUN! NOT the person he is writing about!
and “as long as men can breathe…” i think he means mankind.</p>
<p>So yes, way off. But I guess if you had enough textual evidence to support your claim, your teacher will understand. </p>
<p>I’ve studied this poem a lot in school, and basically the message is this: The lover is beautiful. When compared to nature, the lover’s beauty is far greater because nature’s beauty fades (on cloudy days, in winter, with storms), but the lover’s beauty will never fade since Shakespeare has wrote a poem about it. Therefore, the lover’s beauty will “live on” through people reading the poem through the months, years, centuries. Just like as we’re studying the poem, we are keeping the lover’s beauty alive. =] The last lines show it all:</p>
<p>"Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade, [YOU WILL NEVER TRULY DIE]
When in eternal lines to time thou growest: [NOTICE-“LINES”=THIS POEM]
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, [A.k.a., READ]
So long lives this and this gives life to thee. [THIS=THIS POEM GIVES YOUR BEAUTY LIFE]</p>
<p>hope i helped!</p>
<p>Your right, there are no gender references. However, many contemporary scholars do believe that the subject of this particular sonnet is a male youth, as evidenced by the preceding sonnets and the sonnets after it.</p>