Sonnet 130 belongs to the sequence dedicated to the dark lady. It represents a clear example of Shakespeare’s reversal of the canons of the traditional love sonnet. Its content sets it apart from conventional love sonnets. In fact it can be defined as a parody of those poems . Shakespeare deliberate uses the comparisons typical of love poetry to reverse them.

Right from the analysis of the layout , the reader can understand he/she is in front an Elisabethan model because the poem is organised into 3 quatrains and a rhyming couplet. According to the convention of the Shakespearian sonnet, the quatrains should take different aspects of the same problem into consideration.

The first line starts with introducing who is talked about: the speaker’s mistress. She is not addressed herself; instead he uses a descriptive tone and so the reader can imagine very well how the mistress looks like. The first line of the first stanza underlines the main themes of the poem. The line is a single, declarative sentence, it is almost a simile: it compares one thing to another, using the word "like." But it negates the comparison. In this case, the beautiful object is the sun. The speaker invokes the sun because of its physical characteristics: it is bright, brilliant, sparkling. In the second line the colour of the mistress’ lips are contrasted with the colour of a coral.  “If” stands for an expectation which is not satisfied. 

The second quatrain is connected to the previous one and in lines five and six the speaking voice underlines the notion that this mistress is not your ideal female model is reinforced.

The third quatrain introduces the reader to the mistress's voice and walk and offers up no extraordinary claims. She speaks and walks normally. She hasn't a musical voice; she uses her feet to get around. In this stanza , the speaking voice wants to underline that the lady is a real woman, not an idealised one.

So to the final couplet, a full rhyming affirmation of the speaker's love for the woman, his mistress. The last comparison is made with a goddess, which is probably the highest thing a woman can be compared with. The speaker admits that he “never saw a goddess go”, so actually this comparison cannot be taken seriously. He hyperbolizes the ideals of beauty. His specific imagination of a goddess walking does not come close to the mistress’ way to walk.