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So he's saying 'summer can be really windy'(ps May is considered summer). Pretty self explanatory, right?īut what does he mean by "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 completion dimmed"? So here, Shakespeare starts by idly asking should I compare you to a summer's day?' He follows it with 'but you're prettier and more tame'(we have to acknowledge that Shakespeare lived in England, so this is where the poem takes place). Also, typical sonnets of the time were love poems, glorifying the beauty of the poem's subject. First, we must address that the narrator(possibly but not necessarily Shakespeare) is speaking to a woman(which is gathered from context clues). It's impossible to understand everything the first time. If you have no idea what the hey any of that meant, you're not the only one.
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So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st, Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,Īnd every fair from fair sometime declines,īy chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,Īnd summer's lease hath all too short a date: In case you don't know what a sonnet is, it's just a poem with fourteen lines, usually written in iambic pentameter.
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Here, I'm going to break down one of Shakespeare's most famous sonnets: sonnet 18.