Do The Eyes Have It?

I’m a pretty big believer in that whole “eyes are the windows to the soul” thing.  Ask me if there’s beauty in a person, and I’ll look at the eyes first.  Does that make me an eye man?  Ain’t nothing in the world like a big-eye’d girl, as the song goes…;)

But let’s talk Shakespeare.  When I picked Sonnet 17 to be “our” sonnet (that being my wife and I, not you my dear reader), it was this one line that stood out: 

If I could write the beauty in your eyes, and in fresh numbers number all your graces, the age to come would say “This poet lies, such heavenly touches never touched earthly faces.”

(Yes I was lazy with the syntax of the original there.)

For Valentine’s this year, on the card for my wife’s roses, I wrote this:

The bath for my help lies where Cupid got new fire – my mistress’ eyes.

That’s from Sonnet 154.

Then of course there’s the famous sonnet 130, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun…”

I’m at work and don’t really have time to write a small novel on the subject, so I thought I’d throw it out there for discussion – were eyes a particular theme of Shakespeare’s more so than other things?  Am I just seeing what I want to see?  I went combing through the sonnets last night and actually found him referring to his own eyes (most often in the context of “I get to see how beautiful you are”), but very often he does speak of “thine eyes” or “mistress’ eyes” and so on.

 

I figure Carl’s going to have some input (and tell me to read his book :)).  Anybody else?  Don’t be shy.