Sonnet 18
By William Shakespeare
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: Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines And often is his gold complexion dimed; And every fair form fair sometimes 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 wander’st 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.
十四行诗（其十八）
威廉·莎士比亚
我能把你比作夏日吗？ 尽管你更可爱、更温和；
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夏日的狂风可能会摧残五月的花儿， 季节的限制又减少了可拥有的日光； 天空的巨眼有时过于灼热， 常使自身的辉煌无故湮没； 每一种美都会消逝， 不管愿意或是无奈； 然而你这盛夏将永存不朽， 连你所有的美都不会褪去； 死神不忍逼近， 生命只会长存；
只要人类能呼吸，能看见；
我的诗就会存在，而你的生命也会延续。
Sonnet 18 is absolutely one of the most famous sonnets of Shakespeare. Almost every English learner can recite some lines of it either for appreciation or pleasure as both the thematic feature and artistic feature shine brightly and attractively. In the following, I will illustrate my understanding of this sonnet in these two aspects.
Firstly, something about the sonnet’s thematic feature.
The first two lines, in the form of a question and an assertive肯定 statement, show the poet’s idea of comparing his beloved with a summer’s day and also point out that the beloved person is more beautiful and less extreme than
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summer. It is understandable that summer is chosen as the comparison target because it is lovely and pleasant. While the next six lines describe the less pleasant aspects of summer: the too strong wind, the extreme hot weather as well as the easy disappearance of all beauties. The ninth line takes up the comparison with summer again: summer has by now become the summer of life. The comparison turns into a contrast by referring back to the seventh. The poet's assurance becomes even firmer in lines eleven and twelve, which contain a promise that death will be conquered that the beloved one’s spirit and life will surely be eternal. The last two lines further emphasize the poet’s belief that the eternity of spirit and virtue of his beloved by pointing out the poem’s eternal function and existence.
With this arrangement of structure and content, the poet gives this sonnet two thematic meanings. The primary meaning is simply a statement to praise the beauty of the beloved one. But the more important and deep one is the poet’s thought that the power of the poem which can defy不屈服 time and last forever. Its double themes are one distinguishing feature of the sonnet. Secondly, the analysis of this sonnet’s artistic feature.
It contains 14 lines. We can easily observe that the ends of line 1 and line 3 have the end rhyme: /ei/, line 2 and line 4 rhyme with /eit/. And these four lines form a quatrain. The same form is used in the second quatrain from line 5 to line 8,the third quatrain from line 9 to line 12. However，the last two lines have their
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own form, as they have the end rhyme:/i:/Each line in this sonnet is in iambic pentameter which means each line has five feet, usually an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable. For example, we can divide the first line into five independent feet as “Shall I / compare / thee to/ a sum / mer’s day?”With accents on shall,com,thee,a,mer respectively.
Some figures of speech are also in use like simile明喻 and personification拟人. We can see the sun is regarded as “the eye of heaven” which is a simile. We can find the word “his” used to describe the sun and the death which gives them life as the illustration of the use of personification. This makes the images the poet points out linked to each other and vividly form the whole imagery.
To make a general conclusion of its stylistic feature, this sonnet is a typical Shakespearian sonnet with fourteen lines in iambic pentameter, including three quatrains and one couplet with the rhyme scheme ababcdcdefefgg. Besides this, sonnet 18 is in use of alliteration and figures of speech which add more beauty to the tonality 音调of the poem.
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