Sonnet 21

A few weeks ago we sat down to memorize this sonnet as an exercise for our memories. The memorization was successful, but there is something about the sonnet that is a little off-putting. The sonnet is about Shakespeare, not about beauty or anything of a general nature. It is a comparison of Shakespeare to an unknown author who effusively praises his love's great attractions, which Shakespeare finds silly and offensive. He, Shakespeare, has a true appreciation of his love's virtues but will not bend the truth to suit poetic ends.

The final couplet sums it up: he will not praise because the only purpose of stretching the truth is to sell the goods, but his goods are not for sale.

I changed the last couplet to change the emphasis from the writer to the lover.

Sonnet 21 (emended)

So is it not with me as with that Muse,
Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,
Who heaven itself for ornament doth use
And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,
Making a couplement of proud compare
With sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich gems,
With April's first-born flowers, and all things rare,
That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems.
O! let me, true in love, but truly write,
And then believe me, my love is as fair
As any mother's child, though not so bright
As those gold candles fixed in heaven's air: 
   Beneath that arch of heaven I cannot lie
   Until, unarmed, I meet thy conquering eye.
                           (Wrathall couplet)

  [Let them say more that like of hearsay well;
   I will not praise, that purpose, not to sell.
            (Shakespeare)]