Sonnet #69

Poems by William Shakespeare

Those 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,
Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend.
Thy outward thus with outward praise is
crown'd;
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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