My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her b.r.e.a.s.t.s are dim; 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....

And yet, by Heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied by false compare.

His lady-love is a mirror in which the whole world is reflected:

Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind....

For if it see the rudest or gentlest sight, The most sweet favour or deformed'st creature, The mountain or the sea, the day or night, The crow or dove, it shapes them to your feature.

(Sonnet 113.)

When she leaves him it seems winter even in spring: 'For summer and his pleasures wait on thee, And thou away, the very birds are mute.'

(Sonnet 97.)

Here, as in the dramas,[2] contrasts in Nature are often used to point contrasts in life:

How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame Which like a canker in the fragrant rose Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!

O in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!

(Sonnet 95.)

and

No more be grieved at that which thou hast done; Roses have thorns and silver fountains mud; Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun, And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.

(Sonnet 35.)

In an opposite sense is Sonnet 70:

The ornament of beauty is suspect A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air, For canker vice the sweetest buds did love, And thou presentest a pure unstained prime.

Sonnet 7 has:

Lo! in the orient when the gracious light Lifts up his burning head, each under eye Doth homage to his new-appearing sight, Serving with looks his sacred majesty.

Sonnet 18:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate, Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date-- But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Sonnet 60:

Like as the waves make toward the pebbled sh.o.r.e, So do our minutes hasten to their end; Each changing place with that which goes before, In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

Sonnet 73:

That time of life thou mayst in me behold, When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang In me thou see'st the twilight of such day As after sunset fadeth in the west, Which by-and-by black night doth take away, Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire That on the ashes of his youth doth lie As the death-bed whereon it must expire, Consumed with that which it was nourished by.

This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

There are no better similes for the oncoming of age and death, than the sere leaf trembling in the wind, the twilight of the setting sun, the expiring flame.

Almost all the comparisons from Nature in his plays are original, and rather keen and lightning-like than elaborate, often with the terseness of proverbs;

The strawberry grows underneath the nettle.

(_Henry V._)

Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep.

(_Henry VI._)

The waters swell before a boisterous storm.

(_Richard III._)

Sometimes they are heaped up, like Calderon's, 'making it' (true love)

Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!'

The jaws of darkness do devour it up.

(_Midsummer Night's Dream._)

Compared with Homer's they are very bold, and shew an astonishing play of imagination; in place of the naive simplicity and naturalness of antiquity, this modern genius gives us a dazzling display of wit and thought. To quote only short examples[3]:

'Open as day,' 'deaf as the sea,' 'poor as winter,'

'chaste as unsunn'd snow.'

He ranges all Nature. These are characteristic examples:

King Richard doth himself appear As doth the blushing discontented sun From out the fiery portal of the east, When he perceives the envious clouds are bent To dim his glory and to stain the track Of his bright pa.s.sage to the occident.

(_Richard II._)

Since the more fair crystal is the sky, The uglier seem the clouds that in it fly.

As when the golden sun salutes the morn, And, having gilt the ocean with his beams, Gallops the zodiac in his glistering coach And overlooks the highest peering hills, So Tamora. (_t.i.tus Andronicus._)

As all the world is cheered by the sun, So I by that; it is my day, my life.

(_Richard III._)

So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not To those fresh morning drops upon the rose, As thy eye-beams, when their fresh rays have smote The night of dew that on my cheek down flows; Nor shines the silver moon one half so bright Through the transparent bosom of the deep.

As doth thy face through tears of mine give light; Thou shinest on every tear that I do weep.

(_Love's Labour's Lost._)

This is modern down to its finest detail, and much richer in individuality than the most famous comparisons of the same kind in antiquity.

Sea and stream are used:

Like an unseasonable stormy day Which makes the silver rivers drown their sh.o.r.es As if the world were all dissolved to tears, So high above his limits swells the rage Of Bolingbroke. (_Richard II._)

The current that with gentle murmur glides, Thou know'st, being stopped, impatiently doth rage; But when his fair course is not hindered, He makes sweet music with the enamell'd stones, Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge He overtaketh on his pilgrimage; And so by many winding nooks he strays With willing sport to the wild ocean.

Then let me go, and hinder not my course.

(_Two Gentlemen of Verona._)

Faster than spring-time showers comes thought on thought.

You are the fount that makes small brooks to flow.

And what is Edward but a ruthless sea?