Shakespeare starts the sonnet by implanting an image of a summer’s day in our heads. In England Summer is considered to be the most beautiful season. He contemplates whether or not to compare the youth to this ideal day, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” But decides against it in his second line because he feels that the youth is “more lovely and more temperate” than this day. Temperate is used as a synonym for moderate by the poet. The youth’s beauty is more perfect than the beauty of a summer’s day, more gentle, more restrained. He then proceeds to the images of a windy day. Line three, Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May”, tells why the youths beauty is greater than that of a summer’s day. Shakespeare uses “rough winds” to symbolize imperfections. The poet is implying there are no imperfections in the youth, but there are in a summer’s day.
In line five the poet states, “Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines”. Shakespeare uses “the eye of heaven” as a metaphor in this line to describe the sun. The poet means to imply that a summer’s day might have violent accesses in store but the youth is free from all these flaws. In line six Shakespeare again uses the sun image and states, “And often is his gold complexion dimmed”. He uses the phrase “gold complexion dimmed’ to describe the sun again which means that sometimes the sun is not hot enough and it is dimmed with clouds on overcast days. In the next line the poet says,” And every fair from fair sometimes declines/By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed”. All beautiful things (every fair) occasionally become inferior in comparison with their essential previous state of beauty (from fair). They all decline from perfection. The poet is showing that every thing becomes less beautiful when left to chance and time.
In the third quatrain Shakespeare says,
“But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wonderest in his shade;
When in eternal line to time thou grow’st”
“Eternal summer” in line nine is referring back to the youths beauty, that will never diminish unlike the summer and nor shall he ever lose possession of this beauty he so richly possess. Even when he grows old, He will not lose possession of what is fair to him and he will not pale in death’s shadow. Shakespeare personifies ‘death’ and says that even death cannot snatch away the youth’s beauty from him. The youth will keep pace with time and grow as time grows. In these undying lines of this sonnet he will live forever with all his beauty and grace.
The final couplet states that,
“So long as man can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and gives life to thee”
The couplet summarizes the immortality of the youth and his beauty. Shakespeare eternalizes his beauty in this poem so that as long as one can read, one will know the great that he knew. The youth will live as long as these verses live, celebrating him and continually renewing his life and thereby making him everlasting.
Shakespeare uses all these imagery to emphasize the overall theme of the poem. The sonnet also works at a rather curious level of achieving its objective through dispraise. The summer’s day is found to be lacking in so many respects(too short, too rough), but curiously enough one is left with the abiding impression that the lovely youth is in fact like a summers day at its best, fair, warm, sunny, temperate and all his beauty has been wonderfully highlighted by the comparisons.
The scenes that Shakespeare throws at us give us idea of beauty and disappointment. He takes us from a place of pleasure to distaste. He makes us go in one direction then turns us round and causes us to go in a three sixty degree turn. The ride we are taken on is an enjoyable one that makes the sonnet unforgettable which is only done through the explicit images that allow our own ideas to form.
