And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare / As any she belied with false compare.
Sonnet 130 begins by mocking the stock comparisons of love poetry (“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”) and ends with this couplet, which says the speaker’s love is as precious as any woman praised in those clichés. It is a love poem that makes its case by refusing flattery.
Cowards die many times before their deaths; / The valiant never taste of death but once.
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings / That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, / Awake for ever in a sweet unrest.
Come live with me and be my love, / And we will all the pleasures prove.
Had we never lov’d sae kindly, / Had we never lov’d sae blindly, / Never met—or never parted, / We had ne’er been broken-hearted.