William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 130" and Francis Petrarch's "She Used To Let Her Golden Hair Fly Free" both deal with the issue of ideal and unconditional love. However, they go about explaining this love in exceedingly different manners. Petrarch often depicts his lover as beautiful and angelic. On the contrary, in "Sonnet 130", Shakespeare describes his loved one by describing her human-like characteristics, implying that she is not angelic, but mundane, and the poem has thus been categorized as "anti-Petrarchan".
             In "Sonnet 130", Shakespeare seems to concentrate on his mistress's physical imperfections by portraying to the reader that this woman is not an attractive creature. He draws quite a picture with his words by exclaiming that "coral is far more red" (2) than her drab lips, her hair is of "black wires" (4), "roses damasked" (5) surpass the color of her cheeks, and "in some perfumes is there more delight" (7) than the stench of this woman. She cannot sing to save her life because "music hath a far more pleasing sound" (10). And by proclaiming that this woman "when she walks, treads on the ground" (12), Shakespeare implies that this woman does not posses angelic qualities, that she is of this earth. Despite his constant implications of imperfection concerning her, this sonnet is not about an unsightly female. The key to the poem is unlocked in the ending couplet, for he declares that even though the woman is unattractive, he is able to see her inner beauty, and loves with his heart, not with his eyes. This is evident because he thinks of his "love as rare" (13), and she "belied"(14), or was misrepresented, for her inner beauty
             exceeded her looks. This concept introduces an ironic tone, because most people would judge a book by its cover and would not be able to fall in love with someone like his mistress, but he overcame her physical attributes and fell in love with the mind, not the body.
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