Henry Scott Tuke, “The Sun Bathers”
Today was a perfect summer day—not too hot or humid—which led me to compare it, and find it more lovely, than a summer’s day. Have you ever noticed that the young man that Shakespeare finds superior to a summer’s day probably resembles it all too closely? All the things that threaten summer threaten our love as well. Our relationships are often shaken by the rough winds of May, our warm passion hath “all too short a date.” Sometimes we are hot tempered, sometimes overcast and depressed. And always at our back we hear the winged chariot hurrying near as time etches lines into our faces.
The young man to whom the sonnet is addressed is saved only by the intervention of the neo-Platonic poet, who is able to stop the moment through the eternal medium of poetry. But the speaker is hardly benign. He is letting the young man know who really wields the power. Without the poet, he will go the way of all summer days.
So don’t leave me.
Sonnet 18
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 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.
