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Sonnet 18 Symbolism

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William Shakespeare's sonnet, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day" is describing to the reader a perfect young man. Some people believe that Sonnet 18 is one of the greatest love poems of all time, it is certainly one of the most famous of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Shakespeare wrote this sonnet, like the others, in iambic pentameter. The poem begins by slowly building the image of a young man, who eventually ends up being described as a human being who is above every other person he has laid eyes on. He deals with beauty and how it affects time. The nature of the relationship between these two men has been debated for centuries. Is it platonic love or something deeper than that? The young man described in not only this poem, as well as the …show more content…

In this sonnet, he uses symbolism to represent how for eternity people will remember him. He wants the subject of his poem to be remembered forever through his literature, which he makes very clear in his poem. The first reference to this is, "But thy eternal summer shall not fade," (line 9). Again, he is referencing the summer. He is saying that this man's beauty will never fade because of his work, he believes the golden young man that Shakespeare wrote about will live forever in people's memories. Also, the subject is too bright to ever wander into death's path, meaning that his beauty and light is no match to Death. He will forever be young and beautiful, even in the eyes of Death as a result of that he is unflawed. In the 12th line of the poem, Shakespeare literally uses the word eternal to describe his poem, this shows that he believes people will be reading this poem for an extremely long time because, "so long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, / So long lives this, this gives life to thee," (lines 13-14). As long as his poem is popular, the story of the golden young man will be too. He has so much faith in himself as a writer that he knows people will be reading this for years and years to come. Consequently, he believes that as long as there are people to read his sonnet he knows the eternal summer will never cease to

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