What does summer stand for in Sonnet 18? What prompts the poet to remark ‘And every fair from fair sometime declines’?

In Sonnet 18, summer stands for an unknown person who is a threat to the new flower buds and who is fated to die with the passing of time. In the line mentioned above, the poet gets broader in his philosophy which announces that everything beautiful must eventually fade away and lose its charm. The urge to mention that as long as human beings exist, his friend would remain immortal in his verse, prompts the poet to make the remark. The latent desire to demonstrate his fame compels Shakespeare to bring in the concept of eternity in his sonnet. The thought that as long as men live and can read, the poem will continue to live and so keep thee’ alive, encourages the poet to come up with the line quoted above.


In the opening stanza, how does the poet celebrate the superiority of the youth’s beauty through similes?

In the sonnet “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (No.18) Shakespeare is so much inspired with the thought of love that he perceives his friend’s beauty to be eternal, beyond the mutability of time. In the opening stanza the poet draws a number of similes to compare his friend’s beauty to that of the summer season. Yet he feels the comparison to be inappropriate as his friend’s beauty is more splendid and restrained. The summer’s beauty is not constant as at times the sun is too hot and at other times it is dimmed by clouds. Even the rough winds affect the new buds of May. None of the lovely elements of summer lasts long as they are subject to decay with the changing course of time. The youth’s beauty, on the other hand, is timeless. Neither does it fade nor can death snatch away his beauty as he is eternalised in the poet’s verse. Thus, through these similes, the poet celebrates the superiority of his friend’s beauty.