And yet by heaven ... :)

And another all-time stunner for this afternoon’s sonnet:  

________________________________________

CXXX

  My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

  Coral is far more red, than her lips red:

  If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

  If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

  I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,

  But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

  And in some perfumes is there more delight

  Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

  I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

  That music hath a far more pleasing sound:

  I grant I never saw a goddess go,--

  My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:

    And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,

    As any she belied with false compare.

________________________________________

Again, so much has been already written about this that I’ll keep my mouth shut, except to point out that he’s writing a neat sequence of unrhymed couplets in the quatrains, with the lines endstopped except in the fourth and fifth couplet (which creates an impression of increased pace in the middle of the poem before settling down again), with each couplet featuring its own turn.  The main volta is the and yet at the beginning of the final couplet, and the fact that the final couplet (in contrast to the preceding six couplets) is rhymed even functions as part of the volta.  More tomorrow  J