Answer: The two reasons the speaker gives for why all fair things decline are: nature and chance.
Explanation:
In Shakespeare's <em>Sonnet 18</em> (1609), the speaker discusses whether he should compare a young man to a summer day. He realizes that no such comparison should be made, as youth's beauty surpasses a summer day. Among the reasons why he considers a young man more lovely than a summer's day, the speaker lists that <em>everything beautiful will eventually stop being beautiful, either </em><em>by chance</em><em> or in the course of </em><em>nature</em><em>:</em>
<em>"And every fair from fair sometime declines,
</em>
<em>By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed."</em>
However, the beauty of youth never fades. The young man will, therefore, live forever in this poem, and remain as beautiful as he is now.
