Someone once said that love is the best part of any story and that true love goes beyond the limits of death. That someone was completely right. William Shakespeare is known worldwide as the greatest poet of the English language, a title well deserved. He, who is the master of the early modern English, used the power of love in his writing as the pathway to his eternal life as an author. Even though human bodies cannot live forever, their work and their words certainly can. Shakespeare knew that love is, and that it will always be never-ending; that a tale about love that never dies will be infinite and will never be worn out. In “Sonnet 18” Shakespeare used elements of poetry such as nature symbolism, imagery, and personification to support his overall message that he will live on forever in our literature. One of the most important elements used in “Sonnet 18,” in an attempt to woo the speaker’s intended lover, is the nature symbolism. This element is illustrated mainly in the poem’s first two stanzas, where Shakespeare gives vivid comparisons and explanations for why his beloved is more lovely and more temperate than the summer. The summer season in literature is for countless of people a symbol of warmth, bright light and perfect times; a time where love can blossom and happiness comes easily. But in real life summer is not always perfect. Even something as pretty and charming as the summer has its gloomy days as Shakespeare recognized in these lines: “Sometimes too hot the eye of the heaven shines, / And often is his gold complexion dimmed; / And every fair from fair sometimes declines, / By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed;” (lines 5-8) In these lines Shakespeare uses both personification, talking about the eye of the heaven, and nature symbolism to generate his point. With the nature symbolism, Shakespeare creates a picture that tells his readers about the faults of summer, how each of its days can