Album: Take All My Loves - 9 Shakespeare Sonnets (2016)

A Woman's Face (Sonnet 20)

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