Sonnet 148: O Me! What Eyes Hath Love Put In My Head Poem by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 148: O Me! What Eyes Hath Love Put In My Head

Rating: 3.3


O me! what eyes hath love put in my head,
Which have no correspondence with true sight!
Or, if they have, where is my judgment fled,
That censures falsely what they see aright?
If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,
What means the world to say it is not so?
If it be not, then love doth well denote
Love's eye is not so true as all men's "no."
How can it? O, how can love's eye be true,
That is so vexed with watching and with tears?
No marvel then though I mistake my view;
The sun it self sees not, 'till heaven clears.
O cunning love, with tears thou keep'st me blind,
Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Fabrizio Frosini 01 February 2016

A somewhat disturbing sonnet which forms one of the group of four (147-50) in which the poet sees his love as a sort of raging fever, a madness in his blood, and he endeavours to come to terms with his own perplexity. There are probably hidden threads of reference in this group of poems which now can no longer be uncovered. The foulness with which he manages to end each of the four sonnets (blackness, foulness, defect, unworthiness) probably refers to her perceived unfaithfulness, but may also have implications of sexual voracity and/or disease, the French malady as it was called, a name which covered various sexually transmitted diseases, but more often referred to syphilis and its devastating effects. The sonnet may also be read as if it were part of a sequence complaining of a beloved mistress's disdain, but given the content of some of the surrounding sonnets, (e.g.142,151,152) it seems more probable that there are other hidden and more sinister meanings. shakespeares-sonnets.com/

26 0 Reply
Brian Jani 26 April 2014

Awesome I like this poem, check mine out

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* Sunprincess * 26 October 2012

wow..of course if love doesn't keep us blind then we are going to see the faults of our love..fabulous! .. :)

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