The poem describes the physical imperfections of the speaker's mistress in an unflattering way. He notes that her eyes are not as bright as the sun, her lips are less red than coral, and her breasts are an unpleasant dun color. Despite her physical flaws, the speaker insists that his love for her is as genuine as any other.

1. Sonnet 130
By miss rose-mollie

2. 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.

3. That thou art blamed 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 remains as 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 not to 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