What does the speaker suggest in lines 11–12 of Sonnet 130?

In line 11 and 12 of Shakespeare's sonnet 13, Shakespeare writes:

I grant I never saw a goddess go;My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:

He is suggesting that his subject of the poem, Shakespeare's famous dark lady, is not a goddess. She does not float on air, and as he says even more bluntly earlier on in the poem, "that music hath a far more pleasing sound" than her voice.
Though Shakespeare knows she is a mere mortal, he loves her just as well, if not more, for it. As he writes at the end of the sonnet:

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rareAs any she belied with false compare.

The final phrase "false compare," nicely summarizes the whole piece. He is saying all the flowery words that sonnets usually use to describe their subjects are just too over the top to do them justice. Shakespeare's dark lady is just a normal woman, and what could be more beautiful than that?


In "Sonnet 130" Shakespeare gently mocks the established conventions of courtly love poetry that often used elaborate metaphors and similes in praising the object of the poet's affections. In the sonnet, the speaker compares his love to various beautiful features of the natural world, such as the sun, coral, and white snow—but always to her detriment. The speaker is essentially saying that he doesn't need to draw false comparisons between his love's beauty and the beauties of nature, for hers is a beauty all its own, a very special beauty that is more earthly, more real than anything derived from the natural world.
So many love poets put the objects of their affection on a pedestal, treating them like goddesses. Shakespeare doesn't do that here. Instead, he presents his love as a woman, a real-life flesh and blood human being:

I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:

The speaker's love is certainly no goddess, but then so much the better for her.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45108/sonnet-130-my-mistress-eyes-are-nothing-like-the-sun

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