Sonnet 116 and Sonnet 18

Sonnet 116 and 18 are common sonnets in what the topic is, which is love, however 116 is describing love in a more general sense whereas 18 is describing a beloved.

Sonnet 116 is saying that the speaker sees no reason why two minds of reason join together. Love is not true love if it goes through a change or changes when the lover sees their beloved (I think). Love is also not true love if the lover abandons the relationship when the loved one is unfaithful or has died or departed. Which basically means that true love is the marriage vows - for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part. Love is something that is fixed and is never moving. It is like a star which no one knows the worth of but the height can be measured (this line of the sonnet confuses me a little). Love is not a plaything of time even though rosy lips and cheeks do fade with time. Love does not alter in brief hours or weeks but it will last until the eve of doomsday. If I am (speaker) wrong and it can be proven then I never wrote, and no man ever loved.

Sonnet 18 is a sonnet where the speaker is comparing his beloved to a summer day. The beloved is more "lovely and more temperate". The rough winds of summer shake the "darling buds of May". However, summer has a fixed time period and isn't long enough. Sometimes the sun shines too hot in the summer and the summer is covered by clouds. And everything that is beautiful stops being beautiful eventually. This happens either naturally or by accident. However, the speaker's beloved summer will never fade nor lose possession of their beauty. Death wont brag about the beloved wandering in the underworld, once they are captured in the speaker's eternal verses. As long as men are alive and can see, this poem will live and keep the beloved alive as well.

Both sonnets are speaking on the topic of love however sonnet 116 is talking about the characteristics of love and what makes love true love. How someone could know that they were really in love. Whereas sonnet 18 is talking about how beautiful a beloved is and how this poem will keep that beloved eternal and beautiful forever. Sonnet 116 has a more sincere tone than sonnet 18 because 116 is speaking about how to understand love whereas 18 is trying to preserve the beauty of his beloved as they are at that moment in time and in doing this the speak is also making himself eternal. Being eternal seems like the important thing on the mind of the speaker of sonnet 18 in contrast to the speaker of sonnet 116 which the important thing for them is love.

Both of these sonnets seem to fit with what Pinksy says about sonnets because the receiver of these two sonnets would be flattered. Especially the receiver of sonnet 18 because the speaker is calling her beautiful and wanting to keep her eternal. Sonnet 116 is more characteristics of love and I don't think the reader would be flattered unless there was a side note saying the the speaker loved the reader and this is what love meant or something. Sonnet 116 isn't really "courting" anyone but more telling others what love means in contrast to sonnet 18 that is trying to court someone and make them eternal in a poem.