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Sonnet 130
- 1. Sonnet 130 Bymiss rose-mollie
- 2. My mistress' eyesare 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.
- 3. That thou artblamed shall not be thy defect, For slander’s mark was ever yet the fair; The ornament of beauty is suspéct, A crow that flies in heaven’s sweetest air. So thou be good, slander doth but approve Thy worth the greater, being wooed of time; For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love, And thou present’st a pure unstainèd prime. Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days, Either not assailed, or victor being charged; Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise, To tie up envy evermore enlarged. If some suspéct of ill masked not thy show, Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe. The fact that people say bad things about you won’t be held against you, because beautiful people have always been the target of slander. Beautiful people are always the objects of suspicion, a black crow darkening heaven. As long as you’re good, you’re a target of temptation; slander just proves how worthy you are. For vice, like a worm, loves to devour the sweetest buds the most, which makes you—in your prime, pure and unstained—a perfect target. You’ve escaped the traps that usually endanger young men, because either no one tempted you or you resisted the temptation. However, this praise I’ve given you won’t inflate your reputation so much that it keeps envious people from talking, because they always will. If your beauty weren’t masked by at least some suspicion of evil, you’d be the most beloved person in the world.
- 4. When love remainsas mere figment of dreams, Flimsy as silk, or webs that spiders spin, Yet serves us best, when life’s hard crust it creams, As joys, that might at times, been spread too thin; Such when a scent wafts sweet, from blooms that dance, And picky nose, knows not, from which it’s blown, The same when eyes hailed scores of stars at once, And heart is naught to know, which to enthrone; How strange of love, yet fickle, is this thing, That we worry with much, just as with none, Whilst we collect a lot, as in hoarding, But of many, we only choose but one; ……What is justice, to pick a special bloom, ……When, doing so, would leave the rest in gloom?
- 5. Let me notto the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved. Summary