Two sides of the Same Coin Called Love - Essay Example

27 February Two Sides of the Same Coin Called Love Love is one of the most passionate emotions that drive poetry. WilliamShakespeare has produced numerous sonnets on the theme of undying love. This paper compares and contrasts the sonnets, My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun (hereinafter My Mistress’ Eyes) and Shall I Compare Thee to A Summer’s Day (hereinafter A Summer’s Day). These poems illustrate the theme of eternal love, although in My Mistress' Eyes, the speaker uses a realistic approach and constructs the poem as a parody of traditional sonneteers’ romanticized descriptions of their mistresses, while A Summer’s Day underscores the speaker’s everlasting love through undermining the inability of a traditional notion of summer in capturing his beloved’s magnificence. My Mistress' Eyes lampoons the usual similes and metaphors of romantic sonneteers, whereas A Summer’s Day employs eternal summer and lasting lines as fitting metaphors for his eternal love and his beloved’s beauty. The theme of these poems is undying love, although love is depicted in different approaches. In My Mistress' Eyes, the speaker does not even start with the usual compliment given to women’s physical attractiveness. Instead, he immediately begins with a negative depiction: “My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun” (Shakespeare line 1). The rest of the lines are all contradictions of the common similes and metaphors of love poems, such as comparing women’s beauty or their facial parts to corals, snow, roses, perfumes, and goddesses. Nevertheless, in line 13, the speaker asserts his undying devotion to his mistress when he says: “And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare/As any she belied with false compare” (Shakespeare 13-14). The speaker stresses that his love may probably be more lasting than those who describe their mistresses in unrealistic terms. As one article notes: “…he thinks his beloved is as unique as any other woman who has been lied about by other poets through the use of false comparators” (Grace 1). He knows that his love will last, no matter how dark, comely, or smelly his mistress might be and that is true love for him. As for A Summer’s Day, the speaker offers his undying love in the form of a metaphor for the summer’s day. He finds “summer” inadequate, however, because it is too short, “…summer's lease hath all too short a date” (Shakespeare 4), “too hot” (Shakespeare 5), “dimm’d” by the clouds (Shakespeare 6), and “declines” in beauty (Shakespeare 7). Apparently, the summer’s day is incomparable to the love he feels for his audience and the kind of beauty his beloved possesses. Instead, the only object that he can compare his love to is with his “eternal lines” (Shakespeare 12). Only through these lines can his love breathe forever and that is how much he loves his target audience. The speakers of these two poems emphasize that their love is rare and undying, but My Mistress' Eyes satirizes the traditional sonneteers’ idealized descriptions of their mistresses, while A Summer’s Day underscores the speaker’s everlasting love through comparing his love to summer and poetry. The speaker in My Mistress' Eyes does not think twice in saying what he “sees” in his mistress. He is direct in his tone, when he says that his mistress is nothing like the sun, corals, snow, roses, perfumes, and goddesses. He matter-of-factly states: “Coral is far more red than her lips' red;/If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun” (Shakespeare 2-3). Her lips are not at all red and her breasts are even dun or brownish gray. Roses are red, but the speaker asserts that these roses are not found in his mistress’ cheeks. He even notes that her breath is far from perfume and that it “reeks” (Shakespeare 8). And yet he loves hearing her speak, even when “…music hath a far more pleasing sound” (Shakespeare 10). He also cannot compare her to a goddess, for he has not seen one in his lifetime. At the same time, his mistress walks on land and does not float or fly like goddesses. After saying what his mistress is not, he provides what “is”: his real and raw confession of his “rare” love (Shakespeare 13). The speaker of A Summer’s Day also offers a perpetual and rare kind of love. He cannot even compare his beloved to a summer’s day, because the latter is “more lovely and more temperate” (Shakespeare 2). “Rough winds” can shake summer’s beauty away, but not his loved one’s. The speaker is also not satisfied with the ever changing temperature and “temperament” or complexion of summer (Ray 10). The sun also hides sometimes in the cloud, which makes its beauty short-lived. These descriptions make “summer” fickle and fleeting. As a result, he depicts his loved one as an “eternal summer” whose fairness will never wither or be clouded. To protect and enunciate his love, the speaker immortalizes his loved one with his lines. “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see” these lines of love, his love and beauty will never fade like summer. It will always be summer, the summer of lasting love. My Mistress' Eyes ridicules the customary similes and metaphors of romantic sonneteers, while A Summer’s Day employs an “endless summer” and poetic lines as metaphors for his beloved’s exquisiteness and his never-ending love. My Mistress' Eyes is a parody of sonneteers who describe their mistresses like they are goddesses and suns. This poem asserts that in reality, no woman is a goddess at all. What men see is what they get. The speaker begins with her mistress’ eyes, which are “nothing like the sun.” The sun, after all, is blinding in its beauty, while a woman’s eyes cannot possibly blind any man. Coral is too beautiful, and snow is too white. The speaker stresses that these metaphors are not realistic portrayals of beauty. In fact, he sees his mistress’ hair as made of “black wires” (Shakespeare 4). Her hair is not glossy blonde and smooth, and instead it is as black and as coarse as black wires. While poets say that their mistresses have damasked cheeks, the speaker admits that there are no such roses on his mistress’ cheeks. Furthermore, some poets articulate that their mistresses do smell like perfume, while the speaker undermines such perfume scents, when his mistress’ breath “reeks.” The speaker also underlines that it is not possible to compare women to goddesses, unless poets have seen them in real life. Instead, he emphasizes that his love is not a goddess, because she walks on the ground. The speaker, nevertheless, argues that his love is as rare as any other love. He lampoons the lies poets tell and asserts that his love could be the rarest of them all, because it is grounded on authenticity and not falseness. Unlike My Mistress' Eyes that satirizes sonnets, A Summer’s Day employs an “endless summer” and poetic lines as metaphors for his beloved’s exquisiteness and his never-ending love. At first, he compares his loved one to “summer’s day,” but he soon finds summer as insufficient. It cannot be as lasting as his love, or as beautiful as his beloved. Instead, only the phrase “eternal summer,” whose fairness will never wither or be clouded, can fit his beloved’s beauty. To express his love, the speaker further immortalizes his loved one with his lines. “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see” these lines of love, his love for him and beauty will never die away like ordinary summer. For it is only through his lines that eternal summer and his eternal can be portrayed. These poems depict the theme of eternal love, although their speakers have different approaches. In My Mistress' Eyes, the speaker uses a levelheaded approach and lampoons romanticized descriptions of female beauty, while A Summer’s Day underscores the speaker’s everlasting love through encapsulating his love with flowery words. My Mistress' Eyes ridicules the customary similes and metaphors of romantic sonneteers, while A Summer’s Day employs “eternal summer” and lifelong poetic lines as decent metaphors for his eternal love and his beloved’s beauty. These poems might diverge on how love is constructed, although in essence, their idea of love both flows from raw and enduring love. Works Cited Grace, Dominick. “Literary Contexts in Poetry: William Shakespeare's My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun.” Literary Contexts in Poetry (2006): 1. Print. Ray, Robert H. “Shakespeare's Sonnet 18.” Explicator 53.1 (1994): 10-11. Print. Shakespeare, William. “My Mistresses Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun.” Web. 26 Feb. 2012. < http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15557 >. Shakespeare, William. “Shall I Compare Thee to A Summer’s Day.” Web. 26 Feb. 2012. < http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/130detail.html>. Read More