Fastidiously crafted with beautiful figures of speech, this poem is one of a kind!
The iambic pentameter works flawlessly, the imagery is blissful and rhyming words are icings on the cake.
We understand the importance or appreciate the beauty of certain things only when it gets lost or compared. Shakespeare, here, exploits this psyche in humans to discuss the beauty of someone, who, (according to the poet) has qualities that surpass a summer's day.
In the Renaissance, when Shakespeare wrote, the sonnet was an extremely popular form of expression. Here, we have the speaker talking directly to his beloved
The sonnet carries a strict rhyme scheme - abab cdcd efefgg.
It is 14 lines in 3 quatrains consisting of 4 lines each and a rhyming couplet intended at the end.
The poet starts with a proposition. "Shall I", says the bard, "compare thee to a summer's day". he starts praising his dear friend without ostentation but as the sonnet progresses, his persona is built up into that of a perfect being.
The poet's beloved's beauty is brought out in comparison. This continues in the octave.
But at the start of the third quatrain is where the "turn" is. And the poet marks this turn with a majestic line, "..But thy summer shall not fade". This sentence reverberates like a stoke on a gong. He gives answers to the proposition he proposed in the preceding eight lines.
And the couplet is a summary statement/ a resolution to the poem itself.
He says that even summer is mortal as "..it hath all too short a date". A Latin expression, Tempus fugit comes to mind here. It means that time this fleeting. Summer is all too short, spring moves to summer, which moves to fall, which moves to winter, i.e., it is transient.
This is where one is reminded of pastoral poetry.
In layman's terms, the decrease in the beauty of a beautiful thing is directly proportional to time. It is also spiled by accidental or by natural means. But his beloved's beauty is frozen in time. This is due to the immortalization spell of the Bard.
He achieves that through the couplet. As long as humans live, the sonnet will live on and thus his dear beloved's beauty 'lives'
Time's malevolent character might destroy her physically but not psychologically(in the minds of posterity) This is so beautiful because here we are 400+ years later reading the poet's sonnet and pondering at the beloved's beauty.
Was she so beautiful that the most expressive man of the Renaissance wanted to immortalize her?
We naturally ponder and as a result, her beauty is reborn upon each reading of the sonnet.
This poem is not performing CPR on his beloved's corpse every time this poem is read. The last lines are a metaphor.
Capturing his beloved's loveliness in a sonnet is a way to defeat the grave.
This poem has also stood the vagaries of time as poetry is an effective time machine
