Sonnet · Dark Lady Sonnets

Sonnet 130

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red, than her lips red:

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound:

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:

And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,

As any she belied with false compare.

What it's about

A deliberate rejection of love-poem cliché. Shakespeare lists what his mistress *isn't*—conventionally beautiful, ethereal, perfect—then flips the move: that honesty, that refusal to lie, makes his love rarer and truer than all the fake praise other poets heap on idealized women.

In plain English

Her eyes aren't bright like the sun. Her lips are duller than coral. Her skin isn't snow-white—it's dull. Her hair is wiry and black. She doesn't have the rosy cheeks you see in poems, and her breath smells worse than perfume.

I enjoy listening to her speak, but music sounds better. She's no goddess gliding through the air—she walks on solid ground like everyone else.

And yet I swear by heaven: my love for her is as genuine and uncommon as the love other men claim for women they've dressed up in impossible flattery.

Lines that stick

  • My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun
  • And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare, / As any she belied with false compare

Themes

  • love
  • dark lady
  • beauty
  • honesty
  • poetry
In the app

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