My Misstress' Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun

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 damasked, 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.

I personally love this sonnet by the famous writer William Shakespeare. The message that it is getting across to its readers is still pertinent to today's society.

This sonnet was written to poke fun at the other writers of Shakespeare's time. Shakespeare saw how most all of the other writers were characterizing the women in their writings as these beautiful, goddess-like people who didn't have a thing wrong with them.  Most of the time these females characters were completely fictitious, or in other words, a re-creation of what the writer thought was the "perfect" female. So Shakespeare wrote this sonnet in jest of these other writers. As well, this sonnet is from a collection of sonnets he wrote, this particular sonnet is from a series of sonnets within the collection named the "Dark Lady Sequence".


When we read this sonnet we all probably immediately thought that the narrator was disgusted by his mistress since he was speaking so ill of her. For examples he says "If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head",  this is simply saying that her hair is coarse and black. Most of us would be appalled if our lover/ significant other came up to us and said our hair looks like wires! The narrator also goes on to say that;
- Her cheeks have no colour in them
- Her breath reeks
- That he doesn't like the sound of her voice
- And that she treads on the ground

We, the readers, get the feeling that the narrator has nothing good to say about his mistress, and we also feel as though he possible doesn't have any positive feelings towards her. Yet when we read the last two lines, "  And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare/ As any she belied with false compare." completely throw us of our previous thinking. Once we read this it all makes sense. The entire poem was about how the narrator doesn't feel the need to lie about how his mistress looks. He knows that she isn't beautiful and never will be, but he's okay with that fact. He loves her for who she is, not how she looks.

This is the main reason I love this sonnet is because it makes people take a step back and think about the message of this poem. Love is blind, or at least it should be, if you love someone you shouldn't care what they look like. People should love you for who you are as a person, not what you look like! I feel as though that message is carried strongly within this poem.