“But thy eternal summer shall not fade” Explain
These lines are from Shakespeare's sonnet 18 beginning "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day." They underline the eternising power of verse lo protect the beloved against the ravages of Time. Mutability is the lot of all persons or things, however beautiful. Everything and everyone that is beautiful eventually _becomes less so or ceases lo be beautiful al all by accidents, disease or natural decay inherent in all things. But mutability cannot touch the beauty of his beloved. His youth and beauty (i.e. his summer) will never come to decay as the loveliness of summer does. They arc eternal. The fairness that his friend possesses will never be lost or will diminish under any circumstances. Even death which boasts that it drags all earthly things into its dark valley where ghosts wander, cannot lay its icy hand on him. And it is the poet's verse which will shelter the young man from mutability and death. Once immortalized in lines of verse which wilt endure until the end of time the young man becomes an organic part of time's eternal span (i.e. he grows one with time). So long as men live on earth and can read poetry, this sonnet (or more broadly, Shakespeare's Sonnets) will confer immortality on his beautiful young Friend who is "world's fresh ornament."
■ Comment : The extract reveals the poet's strong confidence in his lines of verse and their power to secure his love and himself against the ravages of Time. This immortality-through-verse theme was a commonplace with the sonnet-writers of the time. It is treated in Spenser's Amoretti, Sonnets 27, 69, 75~ Drayton's Idea, 6, 44~ Daniel's Delia, Sonnet 39. Even the poet's boast that his poem would make his Friend immortal is not peculiar, it was the fashion of the age of Shakespeare.
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