Sonnet 130 claims that the speaker’s mistress matches none of the clichés poets use for beautiful women, and that his love for her is as rare as any love praised with those false comparisons.
Sonnet 130: Full Poem
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.
Text from the 1609 Quarto, with spelling and punctuation lightly modernized.
At a Glance
Here are the key facts about Sonnet 130 for quick reference.
What Sonnet 130 Means
Sonnet 130 takes the standard compliments of Elizabethan love poetry and, one by one, refuses to apply them to the woman the speaker loves.
The first quatrain goes through her looks. Her eyes are nothing like the sun. Coral is much redder than her lips. If snow is white, then her breasts are a dull grayish brown. If hair is like fine wire, as poets like to say, then hers is black wire.
The second quatrain continues. The speaker has seen roses mingled red and white, but he sees no such roses in her cheeks. Some perfumes are more delightful than the breath that comes from her.
The third quatrain turns to her voice and her walk. He loves to hear her speak, though he knows music sounds far better. He admits he has never seen a goddess walk, but his mistress, when she walks, walks on the ground like anyone else.
The couplet then declares his love. And yet, he swears, he thinks his love is as rare as any woman misrepresented by false comparisons. Other poets flatter their mistresses with lies; he tells the truth about his and loves her just as much.
Sonnet 130 Line by Line
Each line, with the sense of it in plain English.
Themes
Sonnet 130 is a joke about love poetry that makes a serious point about love.
Parodying Conventional Praise
Every comparison the poem rejects was a stock image of Elizabethan love poetry, inherited from the Italian poet Petrarch and his many imitators: eyes like the sun, lips like coral, skin like snow, golden hair like wire, cheeks like roses, breath like perfume, a voice like music, a walk like a goddess. By the 1590s these images had been repeated so often that they had little meaning left. Sonnet 130 lists them only to deny them, and the denials expose how empty the compliments had become.
Truth as a Form of Praise
The couplet’s key word is “belied.” To belie someone is to misrepresent them. The poets who compared their mistresses to goddesses were not honoring those women; they were replacing them with inventions. Sonnet 130 refuses to do that. The speaker describes his mistress as she is, and the honesty itself becomes the compliment: he does not need to lie about her to love her.
Love Beyond Comparison
The poem’s argument is that comparisons are the wrong measure of love. The mistress fails every comparison and is loved anyway. What makes the love “rare” has nothing to do with how she measures against the sun, coral or snow. The poem moves the value from her appearance to his feeling for her.
Form and Language
Sonnet 130 borrows the structure of a conventional love poem and turns each of its parts inside out.
Meter and Rhyme
The poem is a Shakespearean sonnet in iambic pentameter, rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Its twelve lines of denial fall into a steady, almost list-like rhythm, one comparison per line or pair of lines. The regularity is part of the joke: the poem follows the rules of the form perfectly while breaking every rule of its content.
The Anti-Blazon
A blazon was a catalog of a woman’s beauties, praised feature by feature, usually from the head down. Sonnet 130 follows that order, eyes, lips, breasts, hair, cheeks, breath, voice, walk, but denies each comparison instead of making it. Critics call this an anti-blazon. Readers who knew the conventional version would anticipate each compliment and get its refusal instead.
“If Snow Be White”
Lines 3 and 4 use a mock-logical form: “If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun”; “If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.” The speaker takes the clichés literally, as if they were statements of fact, and follows them to their conclusion. Taken literally, the conventional comparisons produce something ridiculous, which is exactly the point.
“Reeks”
To a modern reader, “reeks” sounds like a claim that the mistress has bad breath. In Shakespeare’s English the word usually meant to rise or be given off, like smoke or vapor, and did not necessarily mean a foul smell. The line says only that some perfumes are more delightful than her breath. The word is still deliberately unpoetic, but it is less of an insult than it now appears.
“I Never Saw a Goddess Go”
Love poets often said their mistresses moved like goddesses. The image has a famous classical ancestor in Virgil’s Aeneid, where Venus, disguised as a huntress, is recognized as a goddess by the way she walks. The speaker admits he has never seen a goddess walk, and then states the obvious: his mistress “treads on the ground.” The plainness of the line is its joke, and its tenderness.
A Closer Reading
Sonnet 130 ends with one last comparison, and it is careful to claim only equality.
After twelve lines refusing to compare his mistress to anything, the speaker makes a comparison in the couplet: his love is “as rare / As any she belied with false compare.” But the terms have changed. He is no longer comparing her to the sun or to snow. He is comparing loves, his against other men’s, and the claim he makes is strikingly modest. His love is not rarer than theirs, only “as rare.” And even that is qualified with “I think.”
That restraint is the poem’s final act of honesty. A conventional love poet would end with a superlative: my love is the greatest, my mistress the fairest. The speaker of Sonnet 130 has just spent twelve lines exposing that kind of language as exaggeration, so he cannot use it himself without becoming the thing he mocked. He claims exactly as much as he can stand behind, and no more.
The phrase “my love” also holds two meanings. It can mean the love he feels, or the woman he loves, as in “my love is rare.” Both readings work, and together they finish the argument. The woman is as precious as any goddess-like mistress of convention, and the feeling is as real as any, but neither needs a false comparison to be so.
Read in its place in the sequence, the poem’s modesty stands out further. It follows Sonnet 129, the sequence’s most savage poem about desire, and it comes before sonnets full of jealousy and self-reproach about the same woman. Sonnet 130 is the rare moment in the Dark Lady group where the speaker looks at her plainly and likes what he sees, and he takes care not to overstate even that.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about Sonnet 130, answered briefly.
Who Is Sonnet 130 About?
The woman readers call the Dark Lady, the subject of Sonnets 127 to 152. Her identity is unknown. The speaker describes her in the third person as “my mistress” rather than addressing her directly.
Is Sonnet 130 an Insult?
No. It mocks the exaggerated compliments of other love poets, not the woman. The couplet makes clear that the speaker loves her as much as any poet loved a mistress described as a goddess.
What Is a Blazon, and How Does Sonnet 130 Parody It?
A blazon praises a woman’s beauty feature by feature, comparing each to something precious. Sonnet 130 follows the same list of features but denies every comparison, a reversal known as an anti-blazon.
What Does “Reeks” Mean in Sonnet 130?
In Shakespeare’s time “reek” usually meant to rise or be given off, like vapor. It did not necessarily mean a bad smell, so the line says only that some perfumes are more pleasant than her breath.
What Does “False Compare” Mean?
Untrue comparisons, such as eyes like the sun or lips like coral. “Compare” is used as a noun meaning comparison, and “belied” means misrepresented by them.
Related Sonnets
Three sonnets show other sides of the speaker’s love, and other ways of praising.