Love has completely warped the speaker’s eyesight, leaving him unable to see anything—especially his beloved—accurately. He’s trapped in a painful puzzle: if what he finds beautiful really is beautiful, then the whole world must be lying; if it’s not, then love’s vision is simply untrustworthy. He quickly admits the truth. How could love’s eye ever be honest when it’s exhausted from late-night watching and blurred by constant tears? The final couplet sharpens the bitterness: Love is cunning, he says, keeping him deliberately blind with weeping so that his eyes won’t spy the beloved’s foul faults. The mood is one of exasperated self-knowledge. The speaker sees his own delusion clearly, mocks it, and yet remains utterly stuck in it. There’s a weary, intimate frustration here, as if he’s shaking his head at his own foolish heart.
Sonnet 148: O me! what eyes hath Love put in my head — Summary
O me! what eyes hath Love put in my head, Which have no correspondence with true sight; Or, if they have, where is my judgment fled, That censures falsely what they see aright? If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote, What means the world to say it is not so? If it be not, then love doth well denote Love's eye is not so true as all men's: no, How can it? O! how can Love's eye be true, That is so vexed with watching and with tears? No marvel then, though I mistake my view; The sun itself sees not, till heaven clears. O cunning Love! with tears thou keep'st me blind, Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find.