Sonnet 130

    My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

    The prototype of anti-Petrarchan verse — taught in schools worldwide as the poem that dismantles every love poetry cliché of the era.

    anti-Petrarchanism
    beauty
    honesty
    love
    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 Means

    Shakespeare's mistress does not match the standard Petrarchan descriptions of women: her eyes are not like the sun, her lips are not coral, her skin is not white, her hair is not golden wire. If perfume smells better than her breath, then that's just true. But the turn: she is as rare as any woman falsely described by poets who exaggerate. Accurate description beats flattery. She is real. He loves her as she is. Exaggerated compliments are lies; his honesty is the higher tribute.

    Context

    Part of the Dark Lady sequence, probably the most famous poem in it. The anti-Petrarchan mode takes on all the love poetry clichés of the era and discards them. Published in the 1609 quarto.

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