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SONNET 18
William Shakespeare

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 dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimm’d:

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st 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.
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Interpretation:

Sonnet 18, often alternatively titled Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?, is

one of the best-known of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William

Shakespeare. Part of the Fair Youth sequence (which comprises sonnets 1–126 in the

accepted numbering stemming from the first edition in 1609), it is the first of the cycle

after the opening sequence now described as the procreation sonnets.

In the sonnet, the speaker compares his beloved to the summer season, and argues

that his beloved is better. He also states that his beloved will live on forever through the

words of the poem. Scholars have found parallels within the poem

to Ovid's Tristia and Amores, both of which have love themes. Sonnet 18 is written in the

typical Shakespearean form, having 14 lines of iambic pentameter ending in a

rhymed couplet. Detailed exegeses have revealed several double meanings within the

poem, giving it a greater depth of interpretation.

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THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE

By Christopher Marlowe

Come live with me and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove,
That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the Rocks,

Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow Rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing Madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of Roses

And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of Myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool

Which from our pretty Lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and Ivy buds,

With Coral clasps and Amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.

The Shepherds’ Swains shall dance and sing

For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.
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“The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” is a pastoral poem, meaning it is set in

an idealized version of the countryside, where life is good and the air is sweet. Plot-wise,

the poem basically comes down one lover saying to another lover: "move to the country

with me and once you're there we can play by the river, listen to the birds sing, and I'll

even make you some bohemian chic clothing to boot."

The poem was first published—or at least part of it was—in 1599 in a hodgepodge poetry

collection called The Passionate Pilgrim, but people who have spent decades in libraries

studying Marlowe think that it was likely written in the mid- to late 1580s, a few years

before his death. This places the composition of the poem somewhere near the beginning

of Marlowe's career, and definitely before he became a bigshot in the Renaissance theater

world.
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SONG: TO CELIA
Ben Jonson (1616)

Drink to me only with thine eyes,

And I will pledge with mine:

Or leave a kiss but in the cup,

And I'll not look for wine.

The thirst that from the soul doth rise 5

Doth ask a drink divine

But might I of Jove's nectar sup,

I would not change for thine.

I sent thee late a rosy wreath,

Not so much honoring thee, 10

As giving hope that there

It could not withered be

But thou thereto didst only breathe

And sent it back to me;

Since when it grows and smells, I swear, 15

Not of itself, but thee.

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Interpretation:

First stanza:

 Drink only to me with your eyes, or Drink to me with only your eyes (metaphor:

dedicate yourself only to me with your eyes, or with your eyes give a toast to me)

 I'll pledge myself to you with my eyes/loving look, glance/stare

 Or leave a kiss in the cup (the wine cup) and I'll be satisfied--I won't look for wine

 The thirst that arises from one's soul needs a divine drink, but I would not exchange the

nectar of the god's for a drink from you.

The second stanza:

 I sent you some roses, not so much to honor you but that, by being in your presence, the

roses might not rot

 But you only smelled the roses and returned them; but since you returned them, I swear,

they smell like you, not like roses.

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"GO, LOVELY ROSE"

BY: Edmund Waller

Go, lovely Rose—

Tell her that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.

Tell her that’s young,

And shuns to have her graces spied,
That hadst thou sprung
In deserts where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.

Small is the worth

Of beauty from the light retired:
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired.

Then die—that she

The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee;
How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!
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Interpretation:

"Go, Lovely Rose" is lyric poem with four quatrains (four-line stanzas) in which

the speaker addresses a rose he is sending to a young lady. It was first published in 1645

in Poems, a collection of Waller's works. It is among the most famous and most admired

short poems in English literature.

Summary

Before sending a rose to a young lady, the speaker of the poem addresses the

flower as if it were a person. He instructs it to tell the lady that seeing a rose before her

will make it clear why the sender compares her to the flower, for she is just as sweet and

fair as it is. The rose is also instructed to tell her that she should not hide herself from

public view, like a rose in a desert, for no one will see and appreciate her beauty. She will

eventually waste away and die there, unappreciated. Instead, she should come forth and

allow herself to be desired. She need not blush when the speaker admires her.

Finally, the rose is to serve as a reminder of the young lady's mortality when it withers

and dies not long after she receives it. She will then know that her own life is also short

and that she ought to take advantage of the pleasures of life before time steals her youth

and sends her to her grave.