Long ago, black was never called beautiful—or if it was, it didn’t earn the name of beauty. But now, the speaker says, dark features are beauty’s rightful heir, and what we call beauty has been dishonored by fakery. With everyone using cosmetics to “fair the foul” with a borrowed face, natural loveliness has no holy place left; it’s profaned and disgraced. That’s why his mistress’s raven-black eyes seem to be mourning. They grieve for those fake beauties who slander creation by passing off the false as fair. Yet her sorrow becomes her so perfectly—it’s so darkly attractive—that now the whole world insists beauty should look exactly this way. The speaker’s tone is witty and protective, mixing a complaint against artificial fashion with tender pride. What begins as a critique of makeup turns into an intimate compliment: his dark-eyed mistress, in her sincere grief, has unknowingly reset the standard of beauty.
Sonnet 127: In the old age black was not counted fair — Summary
In the old age black was not counted fair, Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name; But now is black beauty's successive heir, And beauty slander'd with a bastard shame: For since each hand hath put on Nature's power, Fairing the foul with Art's false borrowed face, Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower, But is profan'd, if not lives in disgrace. Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black, Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack, Sland'ring creation with a false esteem: Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe, That every tongue says beauty should look so.