Thou blind fool, Love, what dost thou to mine eyes,
That they behold, and see not what they see?
They know what beauty is, see where it lies,
Yet what the best is take the worst to be.
If eyes, corrupt by over-partial looks,
Be anchor’d in the bay where all men ride,
Why of eyes’ falsehood hast thou forged hooks,
Whereto the judgement of my heart is tied?
Why should my heart think that a several plot,
Which my heart knows the wide world’s common place?
Or mine eyes, seeing this, say this is not,
To put fair truth upon so foul a face?
In things right true my heart and eyes have err’d,
And to this false plague are they now transferr’d.
In plain English
Love, you blind god—what are you doing to my eyes? They can see beauty and recognize it when they find it, yet somehow they treat what's worst as if it were the best. My vision is corrupted by looking too much at her; my judgment has been anchored in the bay where everyone else has already sailed.
You've rigged my heart with hooks of false sight, so that my judgment is caught on whatever my corrupted eyes tell me. My heart insists she's mine alone—a private, exclusive possession—even though my heart knows full well she's the opposite: common ground that the whole world uses.
My eyes see the truth but refuse to speak it, instead decorating her ugly reality with a coat of false beauty. Both my heart and eyes have made catastrophic errors before, and now they've transferred all that blindness into this poisoned fascination with her.
