Usually, most Elizabethan love poetry was written in the tradition of the Petrarchan sonnet. That’s why the speaker proclaims his love is rare as he does not flatter her with false epithets. There is no need to have a goddess if one has a partner who understands the minute emotional impulses.
The speaker loves a lady with whom he can share his heart. She is as she is, not a lady with heavenly attributes. According to the poetic persona, his beloved is unlike the beautiful things of nature. Though Shakespeare presents the main idea in the couplet, each section reveals the qualities of a lady the speaker loves. The meaning of this poem is interesting to understand. By contrast, poets who compare their lovers to nature are not really describing them as they are, but idealizing them – and therefore, the poet seems to hint, they cannot love their beloved as much as he loves his mistress. Besides, her skin is dun and her hairs are like wires.
For example, her eyes are nothing like the sun and her lips are not rosy. The lines he spends on her description could very well symbolize his true adoration for the mistress and her looks. The poetic speaker spends an inordinate amount of time describing his mistress down to the bare bones. In ‘Sonnet 130,’ William Shakespeare contrasts the Dark Lady’s looks with the conventional hyperboles used in contemporary sonnets.
Explore Sonnet 130: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun
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