On the Beauty of Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare

Sonnets are most precious treasure given by Shakespeare to human beings. Among them, the most distinguished is Sonnet 18, which is a symbolic lyric poem. Almost every English learner can recite some lines of it either for appreciation or pleasure as the beauty of theme, the beauty of rhetoric , the beauty of rhyme scheme and the beauty of images shine brightly and attractively. In the following, I will illustrate my understanding from these aspects. First, something about the beauty of the theme of Sonnet 18. For the first sight, we usually misapprehend its theme as a love poem to Shakespeare's beloved - a charming lady. But after a close analysis, some scholars explained that this poem is singing the immortality of the poetry rather than a woman. The first two lines compare his beloved to a summer's day, and points out his beloved is more lovely and more temperate. Until the 8th and 9th line, ''by chance or nature's changing course untrimmed, but thy eternal summer shall not fade'', it seems that all these words and sentences are the description of beautiful lady. However, this sentence ''when in eternal lines to time thou grow'st '' which means immortal lines of poetry will become a pat of time and never die. Shakespeare' thoughts and angles are very novel, unique and deceptive, which requires us to throw ourselves into the poem. Second, a brief analysis of the beauty of rhetorics which include rhetorical question, metaphor, personification and parallelism. At very beginning, '' Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? '' this line is the use of rhetorical question. ''shall'' ''thee'', these simple words is used to create a tone of respect and to engage the audience to the following part. Then, '' the eye of heaven'' refers to the sun, which is the performance of metaphor and personification because the sun doesn't have the eyes absolutely. Next, the ''eternal summer'' ''eternal lines'' are also the use of metaphor and personification indicating