A man looks at a woman who is always immaculate and, instead of being dazzled, grows suspicious. That is the situation in Jonson's song. The speaker addresses a "Lady" whose neatness never lapses, and he argues that perfection of this kind hides something. His preference is stated plainly in the second stanza: he wants the look that "makes simplicity a grace," and he cares nothing for the made-up surface.
The first stanza builds its case through repetition. "Still" here means "always," and it hammers through the opening lines: "Still to be neat, still to be dressed… Still to be powdered, still perfumed." The grammar matters too. Every one of these phrases is passive, a list of things done to the woman rather than things she does. She becomes an object under constant maintenance, and the comparison to someone "going to a feast" suggests that every moment is treated as an occasion. A modern reader may also hear the other sense of "still," meaning motionless. That is probably an echo rather than Jonson's main point, but it fits, because the picture is of someone fixed in place.
Then comes the turn: "Lady, it is to be presumed." The speaker cannot see beneath the powder, so he reasons his way to suspicion. "Art's hid causes are not found" admits that he has no proof. The last line, "All is not sweet, all is not sound," plays on two kinds of judgment. "Sweet" belongs to the nose, and so to the perfume. "Sound" suggests health and honesty. The perfume may be covering something that is neither.
The second stanza shifts from accusation to desire. The pronoun changes from "you" to "me," and the imperative "Give me" makes the speaker's taste the subject. The vocabulary of motion replaces the vocabulary of fixing: "robes loosely flowing, hair as free." The passive participles of stanza one give way to loose, open words. The phrase "sweet neglect" is the poem's neatest paradox, since "neglect" is normally a fault and here it is praised. Then comes the sharpest word in the poem: "adulteries of art." To adulterate something is to corrupt it by mixing in what doesn't belong, and adultery is also unfaithfulness. Cosmetics are therefore treated as a kind of lie. The final line sets "eyes" against "heart" and gives the verb "strike" to the weaker party: artifice can hit the eye like a flash of light, but it cannot reach anything deeper.
The form supports this argument by being quietly controlled. Each stanza is six lines of short, roughly eight-syllable lines that pair off into couplets. "Perfumed" and "presumed," "found" and "sound," "face" and "grace" chime cleanly, while the opening "dressed" and "feast" make only a half-rhyme to modern ears. The couplets give the poem a snapping, epigrammatic quality, as if each pair of lines closes a small argument. The song-like bounce suits the title, which tells us this was written to be sung.
That control raises an irony worth discussing in class. A poem praising "sweet neglect" is itself tidy: balanced phrases, matched couplets, no loose threads. Even the idea of looking careless may take effort, and a skeptical reader might ask whether the ideal woman here is just another performance, a more subtle one. We should also notice that the speaker dictates how a woman ought to look. Since the song comes from a play, judging by the title, we cannot assume the voice is Jonson's own, and it may be wise to hold the speaker's confidence at a slight distance.
The poem lasts because it puts into twelve lines a question people still ask: do we trust polish or ease? Its answer is clear, but its wit comes from the way it argues for naturalness with the tools of art.