Sonnet 18: SBP Trial exam 2010 - Test yourself

Read the following stanzas of Sonnet 18 and answer the questions that follow.

SONNET 18

                                        Shall I compare thee to a summers’s day?

                                        Thou art more lovely 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 dimm’d;

                                        And every fair from fair sometimes declines,

                                        By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimm’d;

                                        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.

William Shakespeare

(a) State two characteristics of ‘the eye of heaven’.

(i) ……………………………………………………………………………...[1 mark]

(ii) …………………………………….………………………………………...[1 mark]

(b) What does ‘eternal lines’ refer to?

……………………………………………………………………………………[1 mark]

(c) If you were the persona, would you compare your beloved to summer? Why?

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………….……………………....................................[2 marks]