Can i compare thee to a summers day

Having chosen to live in a non-air-conditioned environment at home, the wishes, well-intentioned as they are, raise the temperature by a few degrees. Heat — and feeling hot — being a thing of hierarchy, it is most often only those at the top who feel the heat as it were: only offices of college principals and vice-chancellors and heads of departments are air-conditioned.

Student life unintentionally becomes a military test — the sweat and toil is literalised in a way that takes us back to the origin of the idiom. Imagine, then, entering a summer classroom where two aged and feeble ceiling fans battle perspiration and expiration. And, in quasi-romantic cheerfulness, begin reading the first line from this Shakespearean sonnet:. The post-colonial classroom is a treasure house of comedy.

The reason was simple: this seemed to be the only metaphor in the poem that had found a good fit — a home — in tropical Bengal. We read literary criticism together, my students and I, but returned disappointed. There was, quite obviously, nothing in it to explain the journey of this poem to a different climate. After all, the ceiling fan moves for at least eight months a year. The responses over the years have been hilarious but also fascinatingly odd.

Who is being described in these lines? I wondered whether cultural conditioning would make it difficult for them to understand that the object of admiration — the subject of description — was a man, given as we are to using a gendered vocabulary to describe beauty. The theme of the sonnet is the old Shakespearean loop of time and art and love and the relationships of permanence and impermanence that connect them.

The greater difficulty however is to decide which noun this adjectival participle should modify. Does it refer to nature, or chance, or every fair in the line above, or to the effect of nature's changing course? KDJ adds a comma after course , which probably has the effect of directing the word towards all possible antecedents.

She points out that nature's changing course could refer to women's monthly courses, or menstruation, in which case every fair in the previous line would refer to every fair woman, with the implication that the youth is free of this cyclical curse, and is therefore more perfect.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Referring forwards to the eternity promised by the ever living poet in the next few lines, through his verse. Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall it your eternal summer lose its hold on that beauty which you so richly possess.

By metonymy we understand 'nor shall you lose any of your beauty'. Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, Several half echoes here. The biblical ones are probably ' Oh death where is thy sting?

Or grave thy victory? And Psalms Shakespeare would have been familiar with this through Virgil's account of Aeneas' descent into the underworld in Aeneid Bk. Perhaps with a reference to progeny, and lines of descent, but it seems that the procreation theme has already been abandoned.

Venus and Adonis [But, lo! Imperiously he leaps, he neighs, he bounds, And now his woven girths he breaks asunder; The bearing earth with his hard hoof he wounds, Whose hollow womb resounds like heaven's thunder; The iron bit he crushes 'tween his teeth Controlling what he was controlled with. His ears up-prick'd; his braided hanging mane Upon his compass'd crest now stand on end; His nostrils drink the air, and forth again, As from a furnace, vapours doth he send: His eye, which scornfully glisters like fire, Shows his hot courage and his high desire.

Sometime her trots, as if he told the steps, With gentle majesty and modest pride; Anon he rears upright, curvets and leaps, As who should say, 'Lo! For rich caparisons or trapping gay? He sees his love, and nothing else he sees, Nor nothing else with his proud sight agrees. Look, when a painter would surpass the life, In limning out a well-proportion'd steed, His art with nature's workmanship at strife, As if the dead the living should exceed; So did this horse excel a common one, In shape, in courage, colour, pace and bone Round-hoof'd, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long, Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostril wide, High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong, Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide: Look, what a horse should have he did not lack, Save a proud rider on so proud a back.

Sometimes he scuds far off, and there he stares; Anon he starts at stirring of a feather; To bid the wind a race he now prepares, And whe'r he run or fly they know not whether; For through his mane and tail the high wind sings, Fanning the hairs, who wave like feather'd wings.

He looks upon his love, and neighs unto her; She answers him as if she knew his mind; Being proud, as females are, to see him woo her, She puts on outward strangeness, seems unkind, Spurns at his love and scorns the heat he feels, Beating his kind embracements with her heels. Then, like a melancholy malcontent, He vails his tail that, like a falling plume Cool shadow to his melting buttock lent: He stamps, and bites the poor flies in his fume.

His love, perceiving how he is enrag'd, Grew kinder, and his fury was assuag'd. His testy master goeth about to take him; When lo! As they were mad, unto the wood they hie them, Out-stripping crows that strive to over-fly them. I prophesy they death, my living sorrow, If thou encounter with the boar to-morrow. William Shakespeare Three Songs Come unto these yellow sands, And then take hands: Court'sied when you have, and kiss'd,-- The wild waves whist-- Foot it featly here and there; And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear.

Hark, hark! Bow, wow, The watch-dogs bark: Bow, wow. I hear The strain of strutting chanticleer Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow! This life is most jolly. Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, That does not bite so nigh As benefits forgot: Though thou the waters warp, Thy sting is not so sharp As friend remembered not.

My Love Sent Me a List O my Love sent me a lusty list, Did not compare me to a summer's day Wrote not the beauty of mine eyes But catalogued in a pretty detailed And comprehensive way the way s In which he was better than me.

About this poem: "No, really, a found poem; however, I also find, that if one reads thirty or so Shakespearean sonnets in a row out loud , something is bound to happen. Olena Kalytiak Davis How Do I Love Thee? Sonnet 43 How do I love thee?