Shakespeare Sonnet

Sonnet 116

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.

Steve's Response A bit about the sonnet:

The sonnet has fourteen lines. Three sets of four lines called quatrains and two indented lines at the end of the poem, what's known as a couplet.

In the first quatrain, Shakespeare introduces his mistress and describes her using some kick ass metaphor. We are always taught as artists to embrace metaphor and use them to guide our work. Especially as a design student I found I was being challenged more and more to use good metaphors, visual in my case, written in Shakespeare's. I believe that metaphor should be studied by all artists, to find new, interesting, and sometimes oblivious ways to describe something that would otherwise take on the form of just another piece of information in our brain, instead of standing out as an image with a meaning.

Shakespeare Poetry