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.
What is the gender of the addressee in the poem?
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Correct answer: B. Masculine
Explanation
Sonnets 1–126 are addressed to the 'fair youth', a young man.
Note: Passage I is Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 (public domain), reproduced here.
More Reading Comprehension questions
- What is the upameya (the object compared) in the poem?
- What is the upamana (the standard of comparison) in the poem?
- Which statement shows the relationship of upameya with upamana in the poem?
- It is easier to find words for ideas than for forces because:
- Why does the author say that 'the tension must be conveyed and must be sustained'?
- What is possible in the analysis of a poem if the forces are included in the ideas?