This theme of beauty is closely related to the general theme of immortality. Sonnet Eighteen is ultimately an answer to the question posed in the first line. “The speaker answers this question in the negative, suggesting that the object of his affection is “more beautiful and more temperate” than a mere summer’s day. Although summer days are pleasant, they are neither perfect nor forever. Their finitude and propensity for bad weather make them, the speaker asserts, a poor comparison to the object of his affection (Napierkowski and Ruby). The speaker's use of the word "temperate" pronounced in three syllables is significant, as he will continue to extol the qualities of endurance and consistency rather than those of change. The speaker uses extremes to emphasize the subject's beauty: "prettier," "too short," and "too hot," but at no point describes the subject's actual physical characteristics. We are never given details of the subject's appearance, but we are told that its beauty is greater than that of a summer day and the sun. Then the speaker gives us a twist by saying that the subject is not as good as a summer day, but that it is even better. Shakespeare continues to reinforce this by listing summer's faults; the season that has “winds too violent to shake the cherished buds of May.” We are also told that summer is "too short", thus imposing imminent mortality, in contrast to the immortality granted to the subject immortalized in the poem. Beauty can fade by chance or by the will of nature. The repetition of “just” highlights the inescapable influence of fate over everything that possesses beauty. The speaker reaffirms that the beauty of his subject will never fade, but will be preserved in this poem. This confident statement brings us to the point that this poem was not actually intended to pay tribute to a beloved.