Reading “My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun” and “Shall I Compare thee to a summer’s day? ” by William Shakespeare was very interesting. It can sometimes be hard to understand what the poet was really trying to get at but once you figure them out, it becomes really interesting to see their true meanings. Love poems are challenging to figure out if they truly are love poems, and once I figured out how they were, it was neat to see the true meaning of that poem.The poems “My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun” and “Shall I Compare thee to a summer’s day? by William Shakespeare have a common theme but are very different in their approaches.
The first thing that I noticed with these two poems was that they are both sonnets, they both have fourteen lines and a strict rhyming pattern. Also, they are both love stories talking about their love for someone, and both are referring to the beauty of the ones whom they love. Another thing that both of these poems do is refer to the “beauty” of the women that they love although they do it in two different ways.I also noticed they were both written by William Shakespeare and that he created these love poems in two very different ways. The differences in these poems is that “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? ” is more about beauty and not so much his love, although I know he loves her because of what he says.
He professes his love for her in this sonnet by making her beauty timeless, and it’s a more “traditional” love poem. Also it’s more about time and making her beauty “immortal” whereas “My Mistress’ Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun” is more about his love, and it is a very “non-traditional” poem when it comes to love poems.He doesn’t refer to his “mistress” as beautiful; in fact, he portrays her as plain, and this is unlike most love poems which often talk about how beautiful the loved people are. Shakespeare breaks this tradition, and when one first reads the poem, one may wonder, “How is this a love poem”? In the end though, Shakespeare explains that no matter what his mistress looks like, he loves her wholly and unconditionally whereas in the end of “Shall I Compare thee to a summer’s day? ” he states that by creating this poem, he’s making her and her beauty last forever.I really enjoyed “Shall I Compare thee to a summer’s day? ” and “My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun”.
They make me realize that even though what I am reading is a love poem, it can be made in many different ways and have many different meanings. As we can see, even though both these poems are about love and refers to beauty, one is about making the person he loves immortal, and the other is “non-traditional” in the sense that he refers to how the person he loves isn’t beautiful yet he still loves her.
