SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO A SUMMER’S DAY: themes, structure, diction, mood/tone and poetic devices

SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO A SUMMER’S DAY

THEMES

1. Admiration and love: the whole poem is about admiration and affection for the poetic persona’s object of admiration. This admiration is illustrated by the poetic persona by juxtaposing summer’s day limitations to the efficiencies of his object of admiration.
2. Nature’s cruelty: This is another idea that is expressed in the poem. The summer is discussed as being harsh. This is depicted by high lightening the hotness of the sun and the destructive wind of summer.
3. Death brings limitation: Although, this was not fully emphasized, but the way it is being mentioned in the poem, it shows that death limits people’s glamour. The poetic persona assures his object of admiration that death cannot stop it from shining by bringing it under its shade. In other words, the shade of death stops life and makes it unable to blossom and achieve things.
4. The eternal nature of written texts: In the last couplet, the poetic persona clearly illustrates that his object of admiration will live on as long as the poem survives and is been read by people. Every written work makes the idea inside it to live forever as the book is stored, maintained and recopied for generations yet unborn to access it. Nobody would have known of Moses or Jesus Christ if not for the bible. Likewise, Mohammed if not for the Quran. The originality of African culture and philosophy is being questioned because there are not written texts to support it and stand as evidence. Oral traditions which are distorted from generations to generations in the process of transferring it is all Africans have to present as evidence.

STRUCTURE

The poem is a sonnet – a poem of 14 lines – with three quatrains and a couplet. The rhyme scheme goes abacdcefefgg

DICTION

Apart from being Elizabethan, the language of the poem is simple and direct.

TONE/MOOD

The mood is that of romance and affection while the tone is that of love and admiration, and it’s also that of flatter.

POETIC DEVICES

1. Rhetorical question: The title of the poem, which also started the first line of the poem, is a rhetorical question.
2. Personification: This can be seen in line 9 where death is given a human attribute of boasting and bragging.
3. Metaphor: “Sometimes too hot the eye of the heaven shines.” This line provides the danger of one considering it as a personification, but no, it says “the eye of heaven shines” in which the seeing ability of the eye is been compared to the shining ability of the sun. “Too hot the sun/eye of heaven sees” would have personified that line. Also in the poem, love and beauty is compared to summer (eternal summer).
4. Imagery: The poem is embellished with images laced in lyrics of romance. Eyes, gold complexion, buds, hotness etc.
5. Repetition: The words, “fair” and “summer” are repeated in the poem.

There are more of these figures of speech in the poem, do the good of digging them out.