Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day Literary Analysis

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One knows that time flies and that eventually life must come to an end, but does love stay alive? In the sonnet, “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?” William Shakespeare is portraying love as finite and eternal in comparison to a summer’s day. Shakespeare uses rhyme scheme, metaphors, and symbols to give an allusion of his loved one as a summer’s day. Shakespeare strengthens his writing through the rhyme scheme ABABCDCDEFEFGG. For example, “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” uses the rhyme scheme ABAB. The end-rhyming of these four lines all are relating to Shakespeare’s love in comparison to a summer’s day in May. By using rhyme scheme, Shakespeare also creates a metaphoric comparison between a summer’s day in May to his loved one. Another way Shakespeare strengthens his writing is through his metaphors. In quatrain one he describes his loved one as “more lovely and more temperate” than a summer’s day, but the summer and the loved one is only temporary. In quatrain two he compares the sun setting as the declining beauty of man, whom is decaying over time. Yet, in quatrain three he states that decay can be avoided, if Shakespeare’s loved one is converted to poetry and becomes eternal with “eternal lines” of verse. Shakespeare uses symbolism to give the reader an illusion of eternal love. For example, in the couplet Shakespeare states, “So long as men can breath or eyes can see/So long lives this, and this gives life to thee,” meaning Shakespeare’s poem gives life and eternal love to his loved one. Shakespeare also uses symbolism within his poem’s lines. For example in line seven, “And every fair from fair sometimes declines” is symbolizing a bought ticket, and in line ten “Nor lose possession of that fair thou
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