William Shakespeare Sonnet 18 Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? a Thou art more lovely and more temperate: b Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, a And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: b Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines c And often is his gold complexion dimmed, d And every fair from fair sometimes declines, c By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed; …showed first 75 words of 1038 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1038 total…For the last two feet reinforce the turn, introduced by the “But”. A regular rhythm would have a stress on “shall”, followed by an unstressed “not”. However, the opposite is true. This clearly adds to the contrasting quality of this line: after two regular iambic pentameters the stress on the “not” following the introductory “But” leaves no doubt about the turn the reader witnesses in this line. A truly beautiful example of a Shakespearean turn.