Question

Re-read lines 9-14 of the poem. What is the conclusion of the sonnet and how does this contribute to the poem’s overall meaning? Cite evidence in your answer.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?


Thou art more lovely and more temperate.


Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,


And summer's lease hath all too short a date.


Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,


And often is his gold complexion dimmed;


And every fair from fair sometime declines,


By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;


But thy eternal summer shall not fade,


Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,


Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,


When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.


So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,


So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Answer 1

In the first eight lines or the first two quatrains of the Sonnet Eighteen Shakespeare compares the beauty of his beloved to the summer and all the natural forces that surround this season like “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May” and “Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines”, however, in the last quatrain he declares the immortality of the beauty of his beloved in the lines he write, in this poem he/she will be immortal and not ever the death will own it “Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade” and in the couplet declares the longevity of that eternity “   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,” and “So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

Answer 2

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.