William Shakespeare, Sonnet CXXX (1609)
From Angl-Am
Text
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.
First Edition
William Shakespeare. "130." Shake-speares Sonnets. London: G. Eld for T.T, 1609. EEBO
Critical Edition
- William Shakespeare. Shakespeare's Sonnets. Ed. Katherine Duncan-Jones. Arden Shakespeare: Third Series, 1997.
Further Reading
- Wood, Jane. "Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Shakespeare's Sonnet 130." Notes and Queries, 52 (250):1 (2005 Mar), pp. 77-79.
- Steele, Felicia Jean. "Shakespeare's 'Sonnet 130'." Explicator, 62:3 (2004 Spring), pp. 132-37.
- Thomas, Paul R. "Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 and the History of Two Ideas: The Effictio and the Topos of the World Upsidedown." Encyclia: The Journal of the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, 66 (1989), pp. 70-78.
