Poetry Analysis - "Shall I Compare Thee" by William Shakespeare

Poem:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
     So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
     So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

I came across this poem several years ago during an English class in the seventh grade. We were required to complete a worksheet on it and determine its deeper meanings. Looking back on that class, I've realized that the 'deep thinking' we had completed that day had barely scratched the surface of what this poem's meaning is. On that day, the class had come to the conclusion that it was simply a show of love from one person to another, and had left it at that. I can't tell for sure whether my maturing or my new learning environment has contributed to my deeper understanding of poems, books, and writing in general, but I see a much deeper meaning than I did 2 years ago.

This poem is, obviously, focussed on love, particularly centring around a man's dedication to his romantic partner and his admiration of her aspects, from her beauty to her even temperament. This poem is written in Iambic Pentameter, making for a very even and stately-sounding poem. It's rhyming scheme is also quite pleasant to read, using an ABAB CDCD EFEF GG method to provide a dignified tone to this work. The poem can be interpreted as comparing a woman to a warm, sunny summer day, and is expressing admiration for the woman's seemingly perfect features.

I see this poem as a sort of starting point for any poem wishing to follow a sort of formal poetic approach. It's message and the emotions it attempts to convey is clear, its flow is graceful, and it's wording is expressive and expresses a sense of majesty. It is a classic example of any love poem, and can definitely find the same use it did when it was first intended to be used.