CLII

In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn,
But thou art twice forsworn, to me love swearing;
In act thy bed-vow broke and new faith torn
In vowing new hate after new love bearing.
But why of two oaths' breach do I accuse thee,
When I break twenty? I am perjured most;
For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee,
And all my honest faith in thee is lost,
For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness,
Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy;
And, to enlighten thee, gave eyes to blindness,
Or made them swear against the thing they see;
For I have sworn thee fair; more perjured I,
To swear against the truth so foul a lie!

10

CLIII

Cupid laid by his brand, and fell asleep:
A maid of Dian's this advantage found,
And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep
In a cold valley-fountain of that ground;
Which borrow'd from this holy fire of Love
A dateless lively heat, still to endure,
And grew a seething bath, which yet men prove
Against strange maladies a sovereign cure.
But at my mistress' eye Love's brand new-fired,
The boy for trial needs would touch my breast;
I, sick withal, the help of bath desired,
And thither hied, a sad distemper'd guest,

But found no cure: the bath for my help lies
Where Cupid got new fire-my mistress' eyes.

cliii. cliv. These sonnets have probably no direct connexion

ΤΟ

with the sequences preceding. They are suggested (as W.

CLIV

The little Love-god lying once asleep
Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,
Whilst many nymphs that vow'd chaste life to keep
Came tripping by ; but in her maiden hand
The fairest votary took up that fire

Which many legions of true hearts had warm'd;
And so the general of hot desire

Was sleeping by a virgin hand disarm'd.
This brand she quenched in a cool well by,
Which from Love's fire took heat perpetual,
Growing a bath and healthful remedy
For men diseased; but I, my mistress' thrall,
Came there for cure, and this by that I prove,
Love's fire heats water, water cools not love.

Herzberg was the first to point
out) by the following Epigram
of the Palatine Anthology, which
Shakespeare may have seen in
Latin translation:-

5

ΤΟ

τᾷδ ̓ ὑπὸ τὰς πλατάνους ἁπαλῷ τετρυ μένος ὕπνῳ

εἶδεν ̓́Ερως, νύμφαις λαμπάδα παρθές

μενος.

cliv. 7. general, lord.

A LOVER'S COMPLAINT

VOL. X

465

2 H

INTRODUCTION

THIS piece first appeared at the close of the volume containing the Sonnets, in 1609. No contemporary allusion to it is known; and Shakespeare's authorship rests largely upon its inclusion in this volume. Yet internal evidence connects it closely with the Venus, with the Lucrece, and with the Sonnets themselves. Its theme, like theirs, is derived from phases of relation between men and women which in the dramas he habitually avoided, or which he touched only incidentally, as in Bertram and Viola. The 'lover' is a less innocent Lucrece; her ravisher no Tarquin but a Don Juan, whose weapons are fascination and persuasion. The Lucrece touches the borders of historical tragedy; A Lover's Complaint belongs to the gentler world of literary Pastoral, which Shakespeare-if this be indeed his worknowhere else approached but to set it in annihilating conjunction with his own poetic realism, as in As You Like It, or to entirely transmute and transform it with a supremely beautiful Pastoral of his own, as in The Winter's Tale.