Shakespeare Sonnet 18 Essay

Shakespeare’s Sonnet number 18 seems to Shakespeare immortalizing the subject’s beauty in his “eternal lines”. The subject will live forever in this poem, because Shakespeare is such a great poet that people will continue to read his poem forever, These “eternal lines” are really family lines, or children. Although this poem seems to be about his beloved and her beauty, it is really self-interested; Shakespeare is trying to continue his own legacy through family lines.
“Thee” is something lovely, probably a woman, but there are no pronouns that tell us that it is even a human. The only pronoun in the entire poem is in reference to death, who is referred to as a man in this poem. All we know of the subject is that it is something lovely that

He says he will make this woman live forever in this poem because she is so beautiful. However, he does not actually tell us much about this woman. All we know is that she is more lovely than summer. In other sonnets, he sometimes describes a woman’s eyes or hair or even her body. If this woman is truly so beautiful, why did he not tell us how? How can he immortalize her beauty without telling us anything particular about it? All we get are comparisons. She is more lovely than a summer’s day. More lovely than an average summer day? That would make her pretty lovely because summer is generally very hot and not that pleasant. Is she more lovely than the most lovely day of summer that England ever had? She is also more temperate, so she is moderate. Does this mean he is not conventionally beautiful? I definitely do not know of this woman’s beauty. Maybe he’s not really interested in immortalizing her beauty, but really in immortalizing himself, by writing her a beautiful poem that will get her to have his

The only way for her to immortalize her beauty is to have children, who will be beautiful like her. As long as “eyes can see” they will see her in her children. All men will see this family and know of its ancestry. The “this” that “gives life to thee” may be their children. These eternal lines would grow in time, unlike the lines of this poem which will forever be a 14-line sonnet. Within Shakespeare’s sonnets as a whole this is a transition between the sonnets telling woman they should have his babies and the sonnets in which he tells how he is such a great poet. This poem is often seen as the first of his poem telling what a great writer he is, when it is really the last of his poems about having children.
The specific structure of the poem, like all poems, is also an important thing to look at. Lines four, six, and seven all begin with “And.” He does this for emphasis. This thing is wrong with summer, and this and this and this. Then again in lines eleven and twelve he begins each line with nor. He is contrasting her with summer in the same way he pointed out summer’s flaws. At line nine there is a volta. It begins with a “but.” The poem turns from him talking about the negatives of summer and how it is fleeting, to him contrasting her with summer and how he will give her life for as long as there is