Nichapat Mokmeud
53101010257
EN351 B02

Homework: July 10, 2012
SONNET 130: My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun (1609)

Questions 1. How many images are there in this poem? What are they? Describe and give examples. * 5 images: Visual, tactile, olfactory, auditory, and kinesthetic.
Consider, for example, the dominant sense of visual:
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.
The last line points towards the feel of the mistress' hair, stressing the sense of tactile as we can imagine the rather unpleasant feeling of the speaker as he goes to touch his mistress' hair.
There is a definite appeal to olfactory in the fragrance that the mistress exudes, as the "breath that from my mistress reeks"

An auditory image is captured in the sound of her speech, "music hath a far more pleasing sound."

And a kinesthetic image is captured in the movement of her walk, “when she walk, treads on the ground”

Thus we can see that this poem successfully appeals to a number of the senses to create excellent imagery.

2. In this poem, the poet compares his “mistress” to a conventional beautiful woman. Describe how a conventional beautiful woman looks like and how the poet’s mistress looks like. * The speaker is honest about his love, and describes her as an average person. He says her eyes are "not like the sun" - meaning they are not overly bright. He says that her is black - "black wires grow on her head". He says that her breasts "are dun", meaning that they are not pure white but a more faded and average skin tone. He explains that her breath is not like perfume, and her voice is not like music. He is saying that she is not perfect. The compares used by the other poets suggest that the woman are