during which the positive qualities of summer are at their best. The beauty is described in the shape of an answer to the question posed in the first line: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” This question is only intended to introduce the subject, which is the beauty of the lover. It is not relevant if the poet does or does not compare him or her to a summer’s day. Of more importance is the result of this comparison. What then is the result of the comparison? Already in line 2 it becomes clear that the object of admiration is preferred to the “summer’s day”. The following lines (lines 3 to 8) present a number of negative qualities of summer. These can be reduced to two basic ideas which are joined in line 4: “And summer’s lease hath too short a date”. The first idea presented is the idea that the beauty of summer is not stable. Sometimes there are “Rough winds” (line 3), the sun may be too hot (line 5) or not bright enough (line 6). The lover is described as “more temperate” in line 2 and therefore less prone to vary between extremes. The second basic idea is the idea that time ends everything. The notion of time is already present in line 1 in which the “summer’s day” is mentioned, the day being one of the measures of time. Then in line 7 it says that every beauty at one time or another is affected either by chance or by the change of season (“nature’s changing course” line 8), in this case the end of summer. The object of the persona’s adoration does not suffer from this finiteness. His “eternal summer’s day shall not fade”, or, as described in line 10, his beauty will remain his forever and the personification of death in line 11 shall not be able to make him follow him into the realms of the dead. This immunity from devouring time is accomplished by immortalisation in line...
