Comparing Shakespeare's 'Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day' and Burns' 'A Red Red Rose'

Love is not always an easy adventure to take part in. As a result, thousands of poems and sonnets have been written about love bonds that are either praised and happily blessed or love bonds that undergo struggle and pain to cling on to their forbidden love. Gwendolyn Brooks sonnet "A Lovely Love," explores the emotions and thoughts between two lovers who are striving for their natural human right to love while delicately revealing society 's crime in vilifying a couples right to love. Gwendolyn Brooks uses several examples of imagery and metaphors to convey a dark and hopeless mood that emphasizes the hardships that the two lovers must endure to prevail their love that society has condemned.

Indian activist, Mahatma Gandhi, once said, “Love is one of the most powerful forces of the world.” “Cyrano de Bergerac” is a French play that’s about a man who falls for a girl who doesn’t love him back. “Sonnet 18”, also known as “Shall I compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?”, is one of Shakespeare's famous poems and it compares a woman to a summer day. Both brilliant allegories have many similarities in their massages despite being written almost three hundred years apart. Regardless of basic plot and word length, both stories posses surprisingly identical messages. Edmond Rostand's, “Cyrano de Bergerac”, and Shakespeare's, “Sonnet 18” both exhibit their themes of love, but while Rostand does it more through metaphors, Shakespeare does it more through personification.

Throughout human history, there has been many different periods of time. Each of these have affected the respective literature created during those times. In some cases, it built the framework of the story in question. So, clearly, it is important to be able to identify which period a story is from and see how it influenced the story itself. Many stories would be drastically different without the time they were set in.

“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun…” is a sonnet written by William Shakespeare and is also known as Sonnet 130. He wrote this poem to mock the conventional Petrarchan love sonnets which are about women who have unattainable beauty. This poem is written in the Shakespearean sonnet format which consists of a total 14 lines with the first 12 lines divided into three quatrains, and the last two lines make up a couplet. The quatrains establish the motif or problem of the poem while the ending couplet explains or resolves the previous lines. Sonnet 130 is a long conceit where the speaker of the poem goes through a long list of comparisons that seem like insults. The speaker uses juxtaposition to show that his love for his mistress is strong by describing her in a blunt way that seems insulting on the surface, but he reveals in the end he loves her even though she is flawed.

These qualities are apparent in Sonnet 18 “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day” by Shakespeare which is written to a friend with whom the writer has a close bond. Sonnet 18, written in the Elizabethan Age of the Renaissances, stresses the writer’s affectionate feeling towards his friend. According to Shakespeare Online, Shakespeare wrote 126 poems for his dear friend, revealing their close relationship. By stating the flaws of “a summer’s day” (Sonnet 18, 1) while highlighting the perfections of his dear friend, William Shakespeare, in Sonnet 18, persuades readers that true love, even towards a friend, is immortal; since love is everlasting, the subjects’ memory will live on forever as

In the poems ‘Let Me Describe for You Her Eyes’ by Glenn Colquhoun, and ‘Sonnet XVIII’ by William Shakespeare, both writers’ describe their experiences and ideas of love in two very contrasting ways, which can reflect on the world around us, and helped me learn about the how different relationships can affect people, and the world around them. Though their ideas may differ, both writers used similar techniques, such as the use of an extended metaphor. Similarly, both writers tone and structure supported their own ideas of what was like for them in the relationship of which they are writing, and helps the readers, as well as myself, to understand the message which their poems portray. Both, have very contrasting ideas when it comes to love,

Love can be expressed and described in many different ways. Shakespeare`s sonnets “116” and “18” justify that love has the ability to create extremely powerful feelings between two people, which can help them achieve the ultimate sense of happiness. To that end, when people experience true love they live a more joyful and content life.

Unlike Sonnet 18, Shakespeare utterly abandons the poetic convention of Petrarchan conceit in Sonnet 130. In this poem, Shakespeare denies his mistress all of the praises Renaissance poets customarily attributed to their lovers. The first quatrain is filled exclusively with the Shakespeare's seeming insults of his mistress. While Sir Thomas Wyatt authors a poem entitled "Avising the Bright Beams of These Fair Eyes," in the first line of Sonnet 130, Shakespeare affirms that his "mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun." John Wootton, in a poem published in England's Helicon, boasts that his love has "lips like scarlet of the finest dye," but in Sonnet 130 , Shakespeare is sure that his beloved's lips are not nearly quite as red as coral (11; 2). Michael Drayton, in his poem, To His Coy Love, begs his lover, "Show me no more those snowy

What is the main theme of a poem at the most time? The answer is love because of love always around our life, such as family love, romantic love, friendship. There are two love poems which come from Robert Burns and Billy Collins, and they both are the theme of love. “A Red, Red Rose” is a love poem by Robert Burns, and he combined a Scotland folk and poem to express his deep love to his lover. On the other hand, Billy Collins’s poem is “Litany”, and this poem used a lot of metaphors to contrast his lover with something in the world. Even though Collins’s poem is also a treatment of the theme of love, his poem expresses an unequal romantic relationship. However, Burns’s poem is passionate love and simple to express his love that appealing the reader. In my point of view, Burns’s poem is a better treatment of the theme of love because it uses a lot of rhetorical devices to explain his love, it has a rule of rhyming to make the meaning of love more hierarchy, it gives a natural feeling to express a romantic love.

Though the subject of both Robert Burns ' "A Red, Red Rose" and Christina Rosetti 's "A Birthday" is love, the tone, diction, and form of each underline the different themes. The theme of the Burns poem is the beautiful ardency of the lover saying farewell to his love, while the Rosetti poem focuses on the joyous feelings of lovers being reunited. Both poems convey love as an emotion that transcends the immediate world of feeling; thus, references are made by the speakers to eternity, and vivid imagery is employed to describe extraordinary settings.

Poetry is used to describe more than it is used to define. Poetry expresses feeling and emotions more than just a detailed story. Poetry can be used to go deeper into someone’s personal thoughts and emotions. In “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” by William Shakespeare, “The Whipping” by Robert Hayden, and “The Man He Killed” by Thomas Hardy are great examples of how inner emotions can be revealed through poetry. The three selections also give examples of how they follow good poetry.

The majority of Elizabethan sonnets reflect two major themes: time and love. William Shakespeare, too, followed this convention, producing 154 sonnets, many of which deal with the usual theme of love. Because the concept of love is in itself so immense, Shakespeare found several ways to capture the essence of his passion. Therefore, in his poetry he explored various methods and used them to describe the emotions associated with his love for a mysterious "dark lady." These various ideas and views resulted in a series of sonnets that vibrantly depicts his feelings of true, undying love for his lady. Instead of making the topic less interesting, as some might expect, Shakespeare's myriad approaches

is talking about how in love he is. In the first line he says that I

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (Line 1). “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” (Line 1). These are both two of the famous lines from William Shakespeare’s sonnet 18 and 130. William Shakespeare was an intelligent English playwright, poet, and dramatist during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. He is known as one of the greatest playwrights of all time. Sonnet 18 and 130 are two of Shakespeare’s most famous poems. Sonnet 18 is a love poem about how he compares the woman’s love to a summer’s day. Sonnet 130 has a different approach. It is still a comparison, but it seems to be a more spiteful one. These sonnets are both share similar subjects, imagery, theme, and rhyme scheme; however they are more so different in forms and purpose.

Ultimately, Shakespeare expresses his own feelings and opinions through the sonnet. His usage of language techniques helps him do so. Love is shown to be not only a quality, but it is personified as a perfect, unchanging thing, unaffected by time. Shakespeare has really proved himself to be a prolific writer and extraordinarily capable poet as result of this