"My mistress' eyes" by: William Shakespeare

My original thought of this poem from about line 1 to line 12 all I could think was "if this was my boyfriend and he wrote this poem about me, first I would cry, then I would dump him!" The speaker basically just writes about how his girlfriends eyes aren't as bright as the sun, her lips aren't as red as corral, and black wires grow on her hair. Basically, he writes about how imperfect and flawed she is. Unlike most love poems, he does not use cliches, instead, he uses the opposite of cliches. The speaker writes a love poem to his lover, insulting her. By the end though, he redeems himself by saying "I think my love as rare/ As any she belied with false compare." Basically, the speaker is saying, I could say all these things about you that are untrue, but this wouldn't be expressing my true love and feelings. He is admitting that saying all of the normal cliches about women is unrealistic and just lies. He loves her enough to say that she is not perfect, but because of these imperfections, she is more rare than any other woman who is lied to by her lover. I find this to be slightly romantic. For a man to be able to share his true feelings and love with his own thoughts instead of the cheesy cliches is much more personal and heart felt.