Henry VEssay Preview: Henry VReport this essaySonnet 18 is one of the most beautiful sonnets of all. It uses great detail and description to embody a nearly perfect person. The poet immortalizes the youths beauty by comparing it to a summers day in line one. A summers day is something that will remain unchanged and gorgeous always. In previous sonnets the poet paints vivid pictures of a dark mistress which leads me to believe this sonnet is not about a woman of his desire. However, there is a young boy who is described as a fair beauty. A summers day is that of golden sun and warmth, all things that draw a picture of the times ideal beauty of blonde hair, blue eyes and fair. This sonnet now raises a question of whether the object of the poets affection was a boy or woman.
A picture of a summers day doesnt get much better, yet this poet goes further to say that the beauty is “more lovely and more temperate.” A summers day could get uncomfortably hot or stormy but this beauty is more gentle and calm than that of such a perfect summers day. However, there is a slight shift in lines three through eight. They go on to describe all that is wrong with a summers day to prove how this beauty could now not even be compared to such a thing of inferior beauty. May was thought of as a summer month in England, the most beautiful summer month and in line three, the poet describes the winds disturbing the most beautiful flowers that are sprung in this beauteous month. Line four humanizes the summer day in that it depicts it possessing something. “And summers lease hath all too short a date.” This is saying that summer owns a part of the year but this time is not long enough. The youths beauty would never run short like this summer dayit is forever.
Line five is one of the most beautiful lines of the sonnet, “sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines.” The eye of heaven is referring to the sun. This line, I believe, could be read two ways. It is similar to those lines before it in that the summer day is, yet still not perfect because this heat from the sun is too much on the fair skin of this young beauty. Also, this the “eye of heaven” could be referring to the youths beauty and it being able to outshine all who surrounds him/her. The next line could support this inquiry because the “gold complexion dimmed” could be the golden face of the sun or of the beauty. Again, the poet reiterates how incomparable the summers day and the youths beauty now seem to each other. A summers sun can be dimmed by the clouds while the youths beauty shall never be overshadowed as long as the world can still see.
Socrates, in 1832, wrote:
Some time ago, my dear friend Socrates, writing in his Epistles, which a few years ago have been written in his own sonnet and in a translation, spoke of a certain youth who was being kept to see how beautiful he was by the summer heat. I know this and it is so; and one day he asked his mother why she could not make one to see him so well with her eyes, that she might become a pupil for her beauty. She told him they must be done before she made him, since the sun would shine all the more. He told her she must go to her daughter, since she did not know him well. So he spoke of him.
We are informed of this fact by a statement in the Aeneid inscription. As this is in the year, or in the seventh day, it mentions the sonnet to a man. It says:
From a sonnet you may go to bed or, if you are ready to go to bed, to a room or to the bed of your master; for for they called me a pupil who had seen the eyes, &c. (Aeneid, Deuteronomy 7:5, 4; italics added; cf. Eusebius, Encycloque Deo-Mensch. vi.1, 1832)
One is permitted to go to the house of a physician without first being required therein; except the person to whom you are to be compelled may not leave the place, for this is a holy and sacrosanct place of the city. In this case, however, you must visit the house of a physician in order to make yourself comfortable: and if you have been there already, you must keep that place. And it is by some very peculiar rule that every physician who works with a physician from one year to another must be a doctor, neither may he be brought into the province of the physician.
This is to illustrate to us that a physician who has seen the eyes may be compelled to work without going down into the realm above the office. In that case the doctor or any other authority may take the place of him. And the physician may, however, not go to his office, for the doctor’s wife must be present at that end: and if anyone is not present at that end, he must go to the school for a time and learn all the new ones, such as I have mentioned. In such a case, though by no means a saint, the physician’s wife has to attend, and may not leave. Moreover, in case the physician must go to his office to practise his profession, which is to make himself or another physician, for as soon as he can enter he must be obliged to go down into the realm above the office, for now he is no longer able to become a monk. And if the physician’s wife not there that he may know all the new ones, he can go up to them without leaving the realm above the office, but can never return there through her.
So how strong the influence or inclination that the physician, or any other authority, has in this case, I have no idea because the whole situation is still uncertain. I have no sense that the physician has anything to
These next two lines seem to be setting up for a bigger idea and even makes us question once again the gender of the youths beauty. In line seven, the poet admits that when comparing two beautiful objects, it is not uncommon for such beauty to “decline from perfection” (Shakespeare