Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me

Song Meaning

The speaker is captivated by the beloved's eyes, which have adopted a mournful appearance out of pity for his suffering. These dark eyes, the narrator insists, are more beautiful than the sun or evening star, making the beloved's face more striking. This visual beauty, he argues, should extend to her heart, urging her to genuinely mourn his pain as she does visually. The central tension lies in the beloved's feigned or superficial pity versus the speaker's desire for genuine emotional reciprocity. He observes her outward show of grief – her eyes in black, her "pretty ruth" – but feels it's a performance. He wants her heart to "mourn for me" with the same grace and beauty that her eyes display in their feigned sorrow. The most striking craft element is the extended comparison of the beloved's mourning eyes to celestial bodies. The narrator elevates her "mourning eyes" above the "morning sun" and the "full star that ushers in the even," claiming they "Doth half that glory" to her face. This hyperbolic praise is a rhetorical strategy, designed to convince her that even her sorrowful expression is inherently beautiful, and thus, her heart should embrace that sorrow for him. This passage is effective because it grounds a plea for emotional connection in exquisite visual detail and elevated language. The speaker isn't just asking for sympathy; he's framing her pity as an aesthetic enhancement, a form of beauty in itself. By making her mourning "grace" her, he suggests that true emotional depth would only amplify her already captivating allure, making a powerful, albeit manipulative, case for her to truly feel his pain.