NON-AFRICAN POETRY Examine the theme of beauty in the poem "Shall I compare Thee to a Summer's Day?".

Answer Details

William Shakespeare's sonnet Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day? (Sonnet 18) is a celebrated meditation on beauty. The poet praises the beauty of his beloved, contrasts it with the flawed beauty of nature, and finally claims that poetry can make that beauty immortal.

Comparison with the beauty of summer. The poem opens by asking whether the beloved may be compared to a summer's day, then immediately declares the beloved "more lovely and more temperate". Summer, the season of natural beauty, is shown to be imperfect: "rough winds do shake the darling buds of May", the season is too short ("summer's lease hath all too short a date"), the sun ("the eye of heaven") is sometimes too hot and often clouded over. Natural beauty, however fine, is unreliable and changeable.

The transience of natural beauty. The poet develops the idea that "every fair from fair sometime declines", worn away "by chance, or nature's changing course". All earthly beauty is subject to time, accident and decay. This establishes the central problem the poem addresses: beauty in the natural world inevitably fades.

The superior, unfading beauty of the beloved. Against this background the beloved's beauty is exalted as constant. "But thy eternal summer shall not fade", the poet promises; nor shall the beloved lose possession of that beauty, nor shall death "brag" of claiming the beloved. The beloved's beauty is presented as more perfect and enduring than anything in nature.

Beauty made immortal through poetry. The resolution of the theme lies in the couplet: "So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." The poet claims that his verse will preserve the beloved's beauty for ever. As long as the poem is read, the beauty it records will live on. Thus art triumphs over time and grants immortality to beauty.

Technique and effect. Shakespeare conveys the theme through comparison and contrast, natural imagery, personification (of summer, the sun, and death) and the tight form of the sonnet, whose final couplet delivers the confident conclusion. The tone moves from questioning to assured celebration.

In conclusion, the theme of beauty in the poem is developed by comparing the beloved to imperfect, fading summer, asserting the superior and unchanging beauty of the beloved, and finally claiming that the poet's verse will immortalise that beauty beyond the reach of time and death.