The summer's day is found to be lacking in so many respects (too short, too hot, too rough, sometimes too dingy), but curiously enough one is left with the abiding impression that 'the lovely boy' is in fact like a summer's day at its best, fair, warm, sunny, temperate, one of the darling buds of May, and that all his beauty has been wonderfully highlighted by the comparison.Ī summer's day? This is taken usually to mean 'What if I were to compare thee etc?' The stock comparisons of the loved one to all the beauteous things in nature hover in the background throughout. The poem also works at a rather curious level of achieving its objective through dispraise. Now, perhaps in the early days of his love, there is no such self-doubt and the eternal summer of the youth is preserved forever in the poet's lines.
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Sonnet 17 full#
It is noticeable that here the poet is full of confidence that his verse will live as long as there are people drawing breath upon the earth, whereas later he apologises for his poor wit and his humble lines which are inadequate to encompass all the youth's excellence. But it would be a mistake to take it entirely in isolation, for it links in with so many of the other sonnets through the themes of the descriptive power of verse the ability of the poet to depict the fair youth adequately, or not and the immortality conveyed through being hymned in these 'eternal lines'.
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![sonnet 17 sonnet 17](https://www.eslprintables.com/previews/914430_1-Sonnet_17_.jpg)
This is one of the most famous of all the sonnets, justifiably so.