Hi this is Sonnet 18, one of Shakespeare's most famous sonnets. The poem starts with a line of adoration to the beloved—"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" The speaker then goes on to say that the beloved being described is both "more lovely and more temperate" than a summer's day. The speaker lists some things that are negative about summer. It is too short—"summer's lease hath all too short a date"—and sometimes the sun shines too hot—"Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines." However, the beloved being described has beauty that will last forever, unlike the fleeting beauty of a summer's day. By putting his love's beauty into the form of poetry, the poet is preserving it forever by the power of his written words. "So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." The hope is that the two lovers can live on, if not through children, then through the poems brought forth by their love which, unlike children, will not fade

Sonnet 18 is the only Shakespeare I have read. It's my favourite love poem. the eye of heaven = the sun. (beautifully described, huh?) I wonder how would Shakespeare describe the the moon and the earth. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines = Sometimes even the lovely sun can shine too brightly and too hot.

Hi... This sonnet of Shakespeare attempts to explain the nature of time as it passes, and as it acts on human life. In the first quatrain, the speaker says that the minutes replace one another like waves on the “pebbled shore,” each taking the place of that which came before it in a regular sequence. In the second quatrain, he tells the story of a human life in time by comparing it to the sun: at birth (“Nativity”), it rises over the ocean (“the main of light”), then crawls upward toward noon (the “crown” of “maturity”), then is suddenly undone by “crooked eclipses”, which fight against and confound the sun’s glory. In the third quatrain, time is depicted as a ravaging monster, which halts youthful flourish, digs wrinkles in the brow of beauty, gobbles up nature’s beauties, and mows down with his scythe everything that stands. In the couplet, the speaker opposes his verse to the ravages of time: he says that his verse will stand in times to come, and will continue to praise the “worth” of the beloved despite the “cruel hand” of time.