Analysis of Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? (Sonnet 18)

William Shakespeare 1564 (Stratford-upon-Avon) – 1616 (Stratford-upon-Avon)



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 dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest 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.


Scheme ABACDEDAFGFGHH
Poetic Form
Metre 1101110101 111100110 1111010111 0101111101 111011101 0101110101 0100111101 111101011 1101010111 11010111111 1111111011 10010111111 1111111111 1111011111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 620
Words 116
Sentences 6
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 35
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 486
Words per stanza (avg) 114
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 03, 2023

36 sec read
1,354

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". more…

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