Henry V

Sonnet 18 is one of the most beautiful sonnets of all. It uses great detail and description to embody a nearly perfect person. The poet immortalizes the youth's beauty by comparing it to a summer's day in line one. A summer's day is something that will remain unchanged and gorgeous always. In previous sonnet's the poet paints vivid pictures of a dark mistress which leads me to believe this sonnet is not about a woman of his desire. However, there is a young boy who is described as a fair beauty. A summer's day is that of golden sun and warmth, all things that draw a picture of the time's ideal beauty of blonde hair, blue eyes and fair. This sonnet now raises a question of whether the object of the poet's affection was a boy or woman.

A picture of a summer's day doesn't get much better, yet this poet goes further to say that the beauty is "more lovely and more temperate." A summer's day could get uncomfortably hot or stormy but this beauty is more gentle and calm than that of such a perfect summer's day. However, there is a slight shift in lines three through eight. They go on to describe all that is wrong with a summer's day to prove how this beauty could now not even be compared to such a thing of inferior beauty. May was thought of as a summer month in England, the most beautiful summer month and in line three, the poet describes the winds disturbing the most beautiful flowers that are sprung in this beauteous month. Line four humanizes the summer day in that it depicts it possessing something. "And summer's lease hath all too short a date." This is saying that summer owns a part of the year but this time is not long enough. The youth's beauty would never run short like this summer day...it is forever. Line five is one of the most beautiful lines of the sonnet, "sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines." The eye of heaven is referring to the sun. This line, I believe, could be read two ways. It is similar to those lines before it in that the summer day is, yet still not perfect because this heat from the sun is too much on the fair skin of this young beauty. Also, this the "eye of heaven" could be referring to the youth's beauty and it being able to outshine all who surrounds him/her. The next line could support this inquiry because the "gold complexion dimmed" could be the golden face of the sun or of the beauty. Again, the poet reiterates how incomparable the summer's day and the youth's beauty now seem to each other. A summer's sun can be dimmed by the clouds while the youth's beauty shall never be overshadowed as long as the world can still see.

These next two lines seem to be setting up for a bigger idea and even makes us question once again the gender of the youth's beauty. In line seven, the poet admits that when comparing two beautiful objects, it is not uncommon for such beauty to "decline from perfection" (Shakespeare