This 3 sentence summary provides the key details and meaning of Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare: The poem compares the subject's beauty to a summer's day, noting how summer days can be hot or the sun dimmed, while beauty fades over time; however, the subject's beauty is eternal like summer and will live on through the poem even after death, as long as people can read the words.

1. Sonet 18
By William Shakespeare (1564 –
1616))

2. Shall I compare thee to a summer's
day?
Thou art more lovely and more

3. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of
May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a
date:

4. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

5. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

6. 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 owest;

7. 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 owest;

8. Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

9. So long as men can breathe
or eyes can see,
So long lives this
and this
gives life to thee.