Sonnet 18, one of Shakespeare's most famous sonnets, opens with the speaker posing a rhetorical question: 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?' The speaker immediately answers by asserting that the beloved is more lovely and more temperate than a summer's day, which can be too hot or too short. The speaker goes on to describe how summer's beauty fades, but the beloved's eternal beauty will not. This is because the beloved's beauty is immortalized in the poem itself. The sonnet concludes with the idea that as long as people read the poem, the beloved's beauty will live on. This sonnet explores themes of beauty, immortality, and the power of poetry to capture and preserve the essence of the beloved.