The eighteenth sonnet of Shakespeare is the most famous of his one hundred and fifty-four sonnets. This is because it treats the subject of literary immortality. The beginning lines are so oft-quoted by many young people to a fair lady even in our times. We could daringly say that it summarizes the love poetry of many centuries (Dickie). It is such a beautiful love poem, written by someone so entranced in his lovers beauty that every loving heart finds an echo of its own in the poem.. The subject that Shakespeare was writing about was earlier believed to be a woman. But now it is commonly agreed by literary critics to be a man (Dickie). He, in the first eight lines compares the lover with things found in nature and finds his lover to be better than those beautiful things. The rest of the poem slightly deviates from this comparison and moves on to the mortality of ordinary beauty. But the beauty of the poets lover is safe as the friend will be immortalized by the poem (Dickie). This sonnet was created soon
after the procreation sonnets of Shakespeare in which the poet tried to persuade the fair Lord to have a child (Shakespeares Sonnets Study). The writing of the poem is of an early period in the career of Shakespeare. It is considered to have been written between 1592 and 1597. The poem is in the typical form of a Shakespearean sonnet, which is of iambic pentameter and ends in a rhymed couplet. This means that there are five metric feet in one line with alternately stressed and unstressed syllables. This is a form that is very common in English speech and can be heard in everyday speech of the Englishman (Shakespeares Sonnets). There will be three quatrains concluded by the couplet. The quatrains are in the form abab cdcd efef gg. Whereas other beautiful things will pass, the beauty of poets friend is preserved in time. This tone helps the reader to understand the depth of affection and the beauty of the beloved, that is being immortalized through the lines of Shakespeare (Shall I compare Thee to A Summ).