Skip to content
QuillOak

Sonnet · Love

Sonnet 20: A woman's face with nature's own hand painted

by William Shakespeare

A woman's face with nature's own hand painted,

Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;

A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted

With shifting change, as is false women's fashion:

An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,

Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;

A man in hue all 'hues' in his controlling,

Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.

And for a woman wert thou first created;

Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,

And by addition me of thee defeated,

By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.

But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,

Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.

Full-text availability follows the United States display decision recorded below; status can differ elsewhere.

Quick facts

Poem
Sonnet 20: A woman's face with nature's own hand painted
Poet
William Shakespeare
Length
14 lines
Form
Sonnet
Themes
Love, Peace

Craft notes

How this poem works

Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.

Shape
14 lines · one 14-line stanza
Line length
Mostly 11-syllable lines.

Want the rules this form is measured against? Read what makes a sonnet, or run your own draft through the form checker to see the same measurements on your lines. How we measure · Report a mistake

Text, source & rights

A traceable edition

Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.

Author record
William Shakespeare1564–1616
Source record
PoetryDBSonnet 20: A woman's face with nature's own hand painted by william-shakespeare, PoetryDB transcription
Display decision
Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
Publication record
Not recorded in the imported source
Text fingerprint
SHA-256 5c8bb81c5188925f
Editorial handling
Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
Jurisdiction-specific, never a worldwide claimRights policyReport a text or rights issue

Keep reading

More love poems