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Comparison between sonnet number 18 and 129.

First of all, sonnets are interesting mystery puzzles of literature, but yet it’s an important part of it too. One of the most renowned poets of all time is no less William Shakespeare. He has written plenty of sonnets, in which is formed by three quatrains and a couplet. What is most interesting though, are that many of his sonnets are similar and some have highly contrasting styles. It’s as if you could tell that Shakespeare was a maudlin person, and his emotions and feelings can change drastically. There are happy and peaceful sonnets by him, as well as sonnets full of anger and hatred. Sonnet number 18 and 129 can be a good example of this, so I chose to make a comparison between them in this final paper.

Sonnet 18 talks about the comparison of the narrator’s beloved with summer. The image of this poem, from the start to the end, are relatively peaceful, where you can imagine rich green trees and pretty flowers that come with summer. It also comes with the image of the sun shining beautifully down at everything. Yet the line ‘Thou art more lovely and more temperate’ tells us that the narrator’s beloved is more beautiful and calmer than that lively summer he described. Moreover, it also says ‘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…’, which kind of gives an impression that this woman the narrator is writing about seem to be something like a goddess. This image created by the sonnet gives us a warm feeling. In contrast to this warm image, sonnet 129 gives a rather dark image about lust and sex. In the very first line of the sonnet, negative words are used: waste and shame. As it goes on, a whole chain of negative words such as bloody, rude, cruel are used. Immediately, the image is definitely not like the one presented in sonnet 18, but a total contrast of it.

Not only is the imagery different between Sonnets 18 and

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