Page 23 - 100 Best Loved Poems - Teaching Unit
P. 23
“Sonnet XVIII”
by William Shakespeare, page 6
Vocabulary
temperate – moderate
darling – beloved
lease – temporary ownership, permission
1. What comparison does the speaker make in this poem?
The speaker is comparing his beloved to the beauty of the season.
2. What poetic device is employed in the seventh line of the sonnet?
The poet uses consonance and alliteration (“fair from fair”).
3. What is “the eye of heaven”?
The eye of heaven refers to the sun.
4. How does the poem’s final quatrain distinguish between his beloved and the summer?
The speaker says that his beloved, unlike the summer, has an everlasting beauty, one that
“shall not fade.”
5. According to the poem’s concluding couplet, why will the beloved’s beauty last forever?
The beloved’s beauty will last forever because it is immortalized in this poem, which will
also last forever.
6. Traditional Elizabethan sonnets are fourteen lines long and end with two rhymed lines.
What is the term for these two rhymed lines?
The term is couplet.
T-5
