The Theme of Mortality in 'Sonnet 18'

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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 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. Soll einem Sommertag ich Dich vergleichen? Mehr Milde, Freude steht auf Deiner Seit': Dem Sturmwind liebste Frühlingsknospen weichen, Und allzu bald vergeht des Sommers Zeit. Zu heiß das Himmelsauge manchmal glüht, Meist aber ist getrübt sein goldner Blick; Verfall droht allem, was in Schönheit blüht. Verfall durch Fügung und Naturgeschick. Doch Sommer Dein in Ewigkeit soll sein, Verwelken darf nur Deine Schönheit nicht, Noch Todesdunkel löschen Deinen Schein, Wenn ew'ge Zeile Dich der Zeit losspricht. Bis als der Todeshauch das Auge bricht, Lebt dieses Lied, das Leben Dir verspricht I think the central topic of sonnet 18 is the poet’s belief that poetry can defeat mortality so that the loved one’s beauty will live on in his verses as long as humanity itself. The speaker of the poem opens with the question that is addressed to the beloved, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" This question is comparing him to the summer time of the year. In the following eleven lines the poet compares his friend with summer days. In lines 2 and 3 the speaker explains what mainly separates his friend from the summer's day: he is "more lovely and more temperate." (l. 2) So that the speaker claims that the

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