Read the poem below and complete the instruction that follows. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” by William Shakespeare 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 wander’st 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. Source: Shakespeare, William. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. 17 May 2011.


Identify lines that include imagery and discuss the effect of imagery on the poem’s meaning.