Question

If" by Rudyard Kipling, from The Poems of Rudyard Kipling. In the public domain.

Sonnet XVIII
by William Shakespeare
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:
5Sometime 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,
10Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest,
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest;
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

"Sonnet XVIII" by William Shakespeare, from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. In the public domain.

Which statement best describes the speaker in Sonnet XVIII?

A.
He is a romantic lover.

B.
He is an honest person.

C.
He is an unbelievable braggart.

D.
He is a shameless flatterer.

Answer 1

A. He is a romantic lover.

The speaker praises the beloved's beauty, compares them to a summer's day, and vows to immortalize that beauty in verse ("thy eternal summer shall not fade" … "So long lives this, and this gives life to thee"), which shows romantic admiration rather than simple honesty, bragging, or shameless flattery.