Sonnet 69: Those Parts of Thee That the World’s Eye Doth View
Sonnet 69: Those Parts of Thee That the World’s Eye Doth View - form Summary
Outward Praise, Inward Judgement
This is a Shakespearean sonnet: three quatrains develop a tension between outward beauty praised by the world and inner worth judged by deeds, while the final rhymed couplet delivers the poem’s moral conclusion that public praise can be undermined when the subject becomes "common." The sonnet’s tight volta—shifting from observation to judgment—compresses argument and makes the couplet’s aphoristic closing decisive and memorable.
Read Complete AnalysesThose parts of thee that the world’s eye doth view Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend; All tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that due, Utt’ring bare truth, even so as foes commend. Thy outward thus with outward praise is crowned, But those same tongues that give thee so thine own In other accents do this praise confound By seeing farther than the eye hath shown. They look into the beauty of thy mind, And that, in guess, they measure by thy deeds; Then churls their thoughts, although their eyes were kind, To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds. But why thy odour matcheth not thy show, The soil is this, that thou dost common grow.
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