My Mistress Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun Tone

Shakespeare’s sonnet 130, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” and Pablo Neruda’s “My ugly love” are popularly known to describe beauty in a way hardly anyone would write: through the truth. It’s a common fact that modern lovers and poets speak or write of their beloved with what they and the audience would like to hear, with kind and breathtaking words and verses. Yet, Shakespeare and Neruda, honest men as they both were, chose to write about what love truly is, it matters most what’s on the inside rather than the outside. The theme of true beauty and love are found through Shakespeare and Neruda’s uses of imagery, structure, and tone.

     “She Walks in Beauty” starts off from a traditional picture of a lady as fair and bright. It links with the brightness of daylight, in its comparison of the mistress to the night. “The distinctive quality of the poem derives not from any departure from the norm but from a graceful elaboration of the conventions of compliment” (Seifter, 82). Avoiding unoriginal or obvious similies, Byron uses metaphors which expresses the idea of a quiet and slight glow. “The mistress like the night/ Of cloudless climes and starry skies” (ll 1-2), not pitch dark but glimmering with a diffused light” (Seifter, 82). She is like a portrait in “chiaroscuro”, her face is copied through an interaction of light and shadow.

In the poem “Self’s the Man” he portrays Man to be more superior to women. His opinion of love’s initial excitement contrasted with the

In George Gascoigne sonnet, For That He Looked Not upon Her the speaker uses a complex attitude toward a female whom he was in a previous relationship with. The speaker expresses his complex attitude through the use of a confused or conflicted tone and imagery. The speaker is attracted to the female but doubtful about her. Also, the speaker does not want to be drawn in again because he remembers her hurting him,even though she tempts him and is very desirable.

“The courtly lady…possesses a curiously hybrid gender. While maintaining stereotypically female sexuality, she also holds, in principle at least, the status of a feudal lord.” Burns’ statement insinuates a reversal of power dynamics between man and woman in the courtly love lyric, implying that the woman’s stereotypical beauty and sexuality in courtship, is a gateway to subverting and overpowering the lovesick male, making her a superior lord. The Amour Courtois lyric is deemed inconsistent with the representation of woman as an empowered “feudal lord” due to the sheer objectification of femininity and beauty. Poets such as Geoffrey Chaucer and William Dunbar commend a woman’s aesthetic appeal or satirise the lack of it, thus elevating medieval misogynistic expectations of physical beauty as a feminine necessity that objectifies women under the control of man’s advances. Throughout courtly love lyrics female beauty is a purely frivolous and superficial trait lacking predominant depth, to render woman as a “lord” would be poetically conflicting as the only power exemplified by female subjects in courtship is through the idolisation and sexual lust of the male devotee.

The speaker uses a conflicting tone throughout “For That He Look Not Upon Her”. In quatrain 1 on line 3, the speaker talks about keeping his head low to not look at her, but when his eyes wander gleams on his face grow. This also shows in the couplet on line 14. The speaker can’t look at her, because he is drawn to her eyes. The speaker’s complex attitude shows through tone,

Compare and contrast the attitudes and values of the two speakers of the poems and how the poets have used language to convey these between “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvel and “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning

Born in 1788, George Gordon Byron, commonly known as Lord Byron, was an English poet and one of the most famous poets of the romantic era. Romanticism was one of the most influential poetic movements in which brought Lord Byron into the literary forefront. Although he has many famous literary works, She Walks in Beauty is one of his most favourable poems. The poem was inspired by a woman wearing a mourningful dress whilst at a ball. Love is the overarching theme, focusing mainly on captivating love. This is seen by the overwhelming sense of his attention that is captivated by her and the fact that the woman seems unobtainable. Through his work, Lord Byron captured the reader's attention through the way he used literary devices and the way he represented different gender representations through the nature of love.

The power of love and emotion is evident in Lord Byron's poems, "She Walks in Beauty" and "So We'll Go No More A-Roving." Because of their consecutive placement in the book, "She Walks in Beauty" and "So We'll Go No More A-Roving" tell a story of a relationship. In the first poem, "She Walks in Beauty," the speaker glimpses a beautiful woman who reminds him of "the night" and "starry skies." Throughout the piece, the speaker is fascinated by her beautiful facial features. The last stanza summarizes this beautifully when he comments on her "eloquent" characteristics. In the last half of the story, "So We'll Go No More A-Roving," however, the speaker is losing the sparks of passion that he once had for his lover. This is largely

Poetry in Elizabethan time was based on courtly love conventions which included conceits and complements. Themes such as the unattainability of the lady, sleeplessness, constancy in love, cruelty of the beloved, renunciation of love, fine passion of the lover versus icy emotions of the beloved, praise of the beloved’s beauty and eternalizing her as being subject of the poem; these all are

William Shakespeare, was a poet that has been acknowledged as one of the greatest play writers and dramatist of all times. He had a gift to transpire heartaches, love and outrage, throughout all his literary creations. This gift protruded all through his many plays and sonnets that he ended up leaving as a part of his legacy. “Shakespeare wrote plays that capture the complete range of human emotion and conflict.” [1]. In my eyes, what allows Shakespeare to have become so incomparable, was his creative capability of simultaneously using the correct choice of word, tone and structure, to allow one sonnet, to have so many different interpretations. In Sonnet 138, “When my love swears that she is made of truth”, Shakespeare once again crafted different levels of interpretations to portray his opinion once more on love. Edward Snow, a American poet and translator, whom was the winner of the 1985 Harold Morton London Translation Award, as well as the recipient of an Academy of Arts and Letters Award for the body of his Rilke translations, calls the sonnet “a touchstone for Shakespeare’s dramatic imagination” [2]. Many think that the sonnet is a continuance of the topic Shakespeare started to talk about back in Sonnet 127, which was about “The Dark Lady” [3]. The Dark Lady, or also known as his mistress, was so called this, because of what is said in earlier poems in which it was made clear that, she had black hair and had dun colored skin [4].

What is beauty? In Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,” a shepherd calls to his love so that she may spend her life with him in “buckles of the purest gold;” and “Belts of straw and Ivy buds, / With Coral clasp and Amber studs” (15-18). The beauty of artifice is clear in the stanzas of this sonnet, however, should one compare it with that of William Shakespeare’s sonnets featuring the “Dark Lady,” one can see the change in perspective of love. Shakespeare expresses his “love” through the words, “In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes, / For they in thee a thousand errors note, / But ‘tis my heart that loves what they despise” (1869). Through his verses, Shakespeare articulates his disdain for vanity and artifice by declaring that no one can legitimately be beautiful and that no single form of beauty is better than the other, physically, or otherwise. Shakespeare denotes the change in standards of beauty through writing about the Dark Lady, expressing his clear disinterest in her lack of beauty and loving her anyway. Through his Dark Lady sonnets, Shakespeare challenges the ideas of what beauty is by suggesting that the idea of “fair” beauty through the use of artifice is not beautiful. This, however, contradicts his argument about the artifice and beauty of the “Fair Youth” being able to preserve one’s legacy in the first 127 sonnets. Yet, while Shakespeare is biased towards the Fair Youth because of his relationship with said youth, be it

Shakespeare and Petrarch, two poets popular for their contributions on the issue of love, both tackle the subject of their work through sonnet, yet there are key contrasts in their style, structure, and in the way, each approaches their subjects. Moreover, it is clear that in "Sonnet 130," Shakespeare in fact parodies Petrarch's style and thoughts as his storyteller describes his mistress, whose "eyes are in no way as the sun" (Shakespeare 1918). Shakespeare seems, by all accounts, to mock the exaggerated descriptions expanded throughout Petrarch’s piece by giving an English poem portraying the speaker’s love in terms that are characteristic of a flawed woman not a goddess. On the other hand, Petrarch's work is full of symbolism. In

While poems often feature beauty as a motif, their approach to beauty changes throughout time. In the Restoration, William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18: Shall I compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?” and Ben Jonson’s A Celebration of Charis in Ten Lyric Pieces feature speakers that attempt to control beauty through their poetry. In the Romantic period, reflecting movements against the Industrial Revolution, William Wordsworth’s “She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways” and Lord Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty” try to understand the motif through (the common Romantic sentiment of) nature. Finally, in the Victorian era, Emily Dickinson’s “Beauty — be not caused — It is” and Walt Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” only acknowledge the presence of beauty rather than control or interpret it. The poems from these three time periods present an evolving view of poetry’s relationship with the motif of beauty — from poetry as a conqueror to an observer of beauty. OR The poems from these three time periods present the evolution of poetry’s relationship with the motif of beauty — from poetry as a conqueror to an observer.

The speaker began with a harsh comparison of his mistress, declaring, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” (1). This begins the censorious tone and allows the speaker to explain his distaste with his mistress’s outward appearance. While this seems harshly critical during an initial reading, by the end of the poem, the speaker concludes, “And yet by heaven I think my love as rare, / As any she belied with false compare” (13-14). This final declaration of love despite comparisons to societal expectations reveals the true purpose behind Shakespeare’s description of his mistress. True love does not rely on physical attributes, and can exist despite any distaste with the physical view of the object of one’s