Sonnet · Love
Sonnet 69: Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view
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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“Sonnet 69: Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view” by William Shakespeare — quilloak.com/poems/sonnet-69
Quick facts
- Poem
- Sonnet 69: Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view
- Poet
- William Shakespeare
- Length
- 14 lines
- Form
- Sonnet
- Themes
- Love, Nature, 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 10-syllable lines (pentameter length).
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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 69: Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view 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 19bf1ae72b73c8ac…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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