Thesis: The outlandishly-hyperbolic tone of the speaker in "My mistress' eyes" displays the speaker's mocking attitude towards cliched romantic poetry.
In the poem "My mistress' eyes", the speaker mocks traditional romantic metaphors. To emphasize his jeering attitude, the speaker creates a multitude of ridiculously hyperbolic metaphors in which he describes his lover. At one point he remarks, "Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head" (2-4). The speaker mimics traditional love poems through the use of numerous cliches and metaphors to describe his lover. The speaker, however, reveals his mocking tone through his use of comedy. The metaphors, traditionally used to describe beauty and pleasurable features, outline the mistress' ugly and horrid outer shell. In the final couplet, the tone shifts from mockery to sentimentality. The speaker reflects on how it is nonsensical to use such intense metaphors to describe love. He believes that his love is rare and valuable and is not to be described through such comparisons.
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