One of the most classic poems relating to summer is William Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 - Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? - in which he discusses how his true love is so much more delightful than the short-lived pleasures of summer. Part of what is fascinating about this poem is that one of Shakespeare's complaints about summer is that it "hath all too short a date" - it ends and turns into autumn too quickly. One might say, well so do human beings. We age and die, while summers keep coming around again. But Shakespeare has a counter-argument for that. He says that through his act of writing this poem, and commemerating this person's beauty, he has now made it immortal.
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.
Part of what is interesting to me is we never really hear
why Shakespeare feels this person is lovely. I'll note that there's debate over whether the person in question was male or female, so the poem can apply to either. Was it a warm smile? Was it kind eyes? We aren't told. We're mostly told about why summer is
not as lovely. Summer is too hot sometimes. Clouds go over the sun sometimes. "Nature's changing course" interferes - rough storms, chill breezes.
And of course this all assumes that somebody does think summer is the best season in the first place. I know many people who adore autumn as their favorite season :).
So does this mean if Shakespeare adored autumn as his favorite season, and then wrote a poem extolling autumn, that therefore it would be more lovely than this person, because it was both superior at the time and also immortalized? Lots to think about!
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