The speaker seems to choose a summer day as something to which he can compare his lover because summer days are generally considered to be quite beautiful and ideal. However, he describes the myriad ways in which her beauty is actually superior to that of a summer day: sometimes the winds blow too hard, or the sun shines too hotly, or the sunlight is dimmed by clouds. He says that the beauty of everything in nature fades or "declines" eventually. However, he declares that her "eternal summer shall not fade" (line 9). In making such a declaration, he confirms that "summer" is symbolic of beauty; his lover's beauty will never lessen as all other natural beauty will because he is preserving it, and her, in the "eternal lines" of this poem (12). As a result, as long as people are alive and can read, her beauty, her "eternal summer," will live on and give her eternal life.
In "Sonnet 18" the speaker muses whether he should compare the object of his love to the beauty of a summer's day. Yet he soon realizes that such a comparison would not do justice to his paramour. For a summer's day, though undoubtedly beautiful, is, like all aspects of nature, subject to change and decay. When summer comes round each year, we always find that its "lease hath all too short a date;" in other words, it doesn't last for very long.
But the beauty of the speaker's lover—her summer—shall never fade. For her beauty is not of this world; it is a transcendent beauty, a beauty of the soul. And even after she finally departs from this mortal life, her beauty will live on forever, encapsulated in the unforgettable words of "Sonnet 18":
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/18.html
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