Beauty, art and immortality (April, part 3)

Sonnet 18 is written towards the singer's loved one. Verses 1/2 state that this one is "more temperate" than a summer's day. Temperance is the key concept here, which disqualifies the days of summer as theme to the poem. It is a poem about eternity, and under the writer's clear and bright language, nature's instability becomes obvious in verses 3-8. Rough winds, short-dated leases, exceedingly hot sunny days, the occasional dimness of sunlight, the decline of everything from its fair state and nature's randomness and unpredictability, all are elements that this singer's eyes see unfit for his song about temperate and unchanging timelessness.

This loved person's summer is not a day. It's not even a summer made of many days. It's eternal. Death shall never brag about this person, because they have nothing in common: the singer's beloved does not walk in the shades of death. One might think of the Greek god Apollos here, as the god of eternal summer and light - the always fair, the always bright Apollos. Nevertheless, we see again the strong influence of biblical language:

For instance, compare verse 11 of the sonnet ("Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade") with the ideas expressed in John 14:30 ("the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me"), Psalms 23:4 ("though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death"), 1 Corinthians 15:54,55 ("Death is swallowed up in victory, O death, where {is} thy sting?"). We see here that this eternal godly young beloved is actually the one in Psalm 45, the one against which Death cannot brag, the one in which Death has nothing. This one is the perfect object for this poem of immortality, the perfect mirror for a song whose images are all never-changing: light and fairness in perfection. The 12th verse, at the end of the third quatrain, announces the overcoming of time.

Then, at the final couplet, we meet the ingenious affirmation of the mutual and simultaneous influence of the poem and the object of the poem over each other. Firstly, we have seen how the singer chose this person as an object, due to this person's temperance, constancy and fairness; thus, this person has caused such a song to exist (and again, we think of Psalm 45:1, in which the tongue of the writer is put in motion in praise to the King's fairness). Now, the singer affirms that the song will make this person immortal, creating an inversion and a reciprocality which well conclude this eternal song in the form of a circle: the youth which first gave life to the poem, now shall draw his own life from it, forever.

Poetry, art and beauty as the key to overcoming death and time. As many times in Western poetry, here we see Shakespeare's assertion to that.