The sonnet starts by marvelling at the beloved’s outward perfection: every visible part is so flawless that even enemies have to praise it. The speaker admits the world’s tongues give the beloved their due, speaking plain truth about that beauty. But then those same voices shift tone. They look deeper, trying to read the beauty of the mind, and they guess at it through the beloved’s actions. What they find cheapens the picture. Like churls, their thoughts, despite kind eyes, add the rank smell of weeds to a fair flower. The beloved’s inner self doesn’t match the glorious exterior. The final couplet diagnoses the cause bluntly: the odour doesn’t match the show because the beloved “dost common grow” — a charge of promiscuity or moral baseness. The whole poem creates a mood of bitter disappointment; admiration curdles into accusation as the speaker confronts the gap between what the eye sees and what the mind eventually smells.
Sonnet 69: Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view — Summary
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.