Explication-“Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day“

3 Pages 665 Words

Poems can touch a person’s heart like nothing else can even come close to. They can make you cry, make you laugh, love, make you forgive, they can bring an abundance of emotions in just a few lines. The most captivating of all poems are love poems, especially when they are telling you of how beautiful you are. In William Shakespeare’s “Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day” he does that very thing. Shakespeare is comparing the love of his life, this beautiful being, to a perfect and timeless season, and he does so in just fourteen lines. So hopefully in the next few paragraphs I can further explain his descriptions.
Poetry does not have to be about grand subjects but can be about anything genuine, from the baseball fan to the hanging bat. Poetry is as universal as language and almost as ancient. The most primitive peoples have used it and the most civilized have cultivated it. It can be defined as a kind of language that says more and says it more intensely. Poems have been around since the beginning of time, just as language, just as life. In the bible, the disciples wrote poems of love, thankfulness, joy, sorrow, and every emotion to God through scripture. Not only did they write poems to God but also to one another. Song of Solomon is one of many books of the bible, but it deals solely with a woman and man proclaiming their love for each other through poetry. Poems also come in many forms, the obvious love poem, poems of despair, envy, thankfulness, paranoia, and any emotion known to man. When all of these emotions are wrapped up in sentence be it together or apart it is defiantly a beautiful thing.
Shakespeare begins the poem with a question that proposes a comparison between his beloved and a summer season. Summer is chosen because it is the loveliest and the most pleasant season. In the second line the comparison starts to favor his beloved: his beloved is more beautiful and less extreme than summer.
The reason fo...