Poetry for Shakespeare's Birthday

[cygna_hime]

This one, I think, is seriously among my favorite poems ever, and one of the best love poems in the history of life. Because love is not, actually, reserved for idealized plastic women. (This was before plastic. But not before idealized plastic women. They were just idealized plastic women suffering from lead poisoning.)

Sonnet CXXX

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.