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Unit 8 · Reading Comprehension English · December 2023

Passage I (Shakespeare, 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 dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
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.

In terms of Indian poetics (rupaka, metaphor), the poem is an example of:

Pick an option to check yourself, or open the answer below.

Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: A. Paramparita rupaka (consequential metaphor), where one superimposition causes another

Explanation

The key reads the sonnet as a chain: once the beloved is cast as a 'summer', further superimpositions follow from it ('eternal summer', 'fair' that will not 'fade').

Note: Passage I is Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 (public domain), reproduced here.

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