Read the following questions before you come to class to help you understand the poem.

Lines 1+2
What is the type of the narrator?
Who is the speaker addressing?
What kind of a question does the poem begin with?
What does "thee" and "thou" mean? What is the difference between them?
What is the comparison established in the first two lines?
How is the speaker's beloved different/ similar to Summer?

Lines 3+4
How do Summer's winds treat the buds?
Is May a Summer's month?
What is meant by Summer's lease?
How is Summer described in these lines? how different is that from the speaker's beloved?

Lines 5+6
Rearrange the structure of line 5. By what license is the poet allowed to break the rules of English grammar?
What is "the eye of heaven"? What figure of speech is used here?
"his gold complexion" refers to who/ what? What figure of speech is indicated by the pronoun "his"?
What other qualities are added here to Summer?

Lines 7+8:
How does beauty fade out?
What is the significance of the repletion of the word "fair"? Does it mean the same in both places?
How similar is the human beauty to the season of Summer?

Lines 9+10:
What is the significance of the word "but" at the beginning of the 9th line?
What does "thy" mean?
How is the beauty of the beloved described here?

Line 11+12
What figure of speech is used in line 12?
Why will death not be able to claim the speaker's beloved?
Where will the beauty of the beloved grow?
What are the "eternal lines"? What figure of speech is used here?
Why are they called eternal?

Line 13+14
What is the speaker's last statement?
What will immortalize the beauty of his beloved?
What exactly is the speaker celebrating in these lines?

General questions:
What is its major theme of this sonnet?
What is the Renaissance's characteristics reflected in this short poem?
What type of a sonnet is this?