Right from the title the reader may be curious to find out why the poet speaks about 'a woman's face' using an indefinite article; indeed tha reader wonders why the poet speakes about a general and unidentified woman instead of his lover or the fair youth. In addition the reader may be also curious to find out why the woman's face is painted by nature.

From the second line of the sonnet (wich makes a run on line with the previous line), the reader can understand that the poet is speaking to the fair youth and more in particular he's saying that the addressee has the face of a woman, that is the same as saying that he is nice-looking. By saying that the woman's face is painted by nature, the poet underlines again the fair youth's beauty. In the first and second quatrain the poet highlighs different quolities that women and the fair youth have in common, such as 'gentle heart' and eyes. Anyway the poet purifies such quolities: the fair youth's heart is 'not acquinted with shifting change' and his eyes are 'less false in rolling'.

Only at line 7 the reader has the proof that the addressee is a man. Finally the poet unveils the identity of the addressee: he's a man who can, with 'all hues' under his control, both steal men's eye and amaze women's souls, indeed the fair youth has both the quolities of men and women's quolities. The fair youth's connotation is made up starting from phisical aspects (from general - face- to particular features -hue-) that are magnified and purified: his face is painted by Nature, his heart is 'gentle' and his eye can gild 'the object whereupon it gazeth'.

In the third quatrain the poet explains how the fair youth can own 'all hues': at first Nature creates him to be a woman, but since she (Nature is personified as a woman) fell in love with her creature, she decided to make the fair youth a man. It make this 'by adding one thing to my purpose nothing': indeed it would have been easier to the poet to love the fair youth if he had been a woman. In the couplet the poet solves this problem: he will leave 'thy love's use' to women and his will be the fair youth's love. So the poet doesn't refuse nature's decision, he accepts it finding confort in the purest love, free from sensual pleasure.