My thoughts and my discourse as madmen s are, At random from the truth vainly express'd; For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, Who art as black as hell, as dark as night. CXLVIII. O me! what eyes hath love put in my head, O cunning Love! with tears thou keep'st me blind, Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find. CXLIX. Canst thou, O cruel! say I love thee not, "Great reason; for past cure is still past care." It was a proverbial saying. See Holland's Leaguer, a pamphlet published in 1632: "She has got this adage in her mouth; Things past cure, past care." MALONE. 6 Lost: as black as hell, as dark as night.] So, in Love's Labour's "The hue of dungeons, and the scowl of night." STEEVENS. 7 That CENSURES falsely-] That estimates falsely. MALONE. When I, against myself, with thee PARTAKE?] i. e. take part with thee against myself. STEEVENS. Do I not think on thee, when I forgot CL. O, from what power hast thou this powerful might, With insufficiency my heart to sway? To make me give the lie to my true sight, And swear that brightness doth not grace the day 2 ?. A partaker was in Shakspeare's time the term for an associate or confederate in any business. Malone. 9 all tyrant, for thy sake?] That is, for the sake of thee, thou tyrant. Perhaps however the author wrote: 66 -when I forgot "Am of myself, all truant for thy sake?" So, in the 101st Sonnet : "O truant Muse, what shall be my amends "For thy neglect of truth MALONE. 1 Commanded by the motion of thine eyes?] So, in Coriolanus: "He wag'd me with his countenance." STEEVENS. Again, more appositely, in Antony and Cleopatra : "Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides, "So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes, "And made their bends adornings?" MALONE. 2 And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?] So, in Romeo and Juliet: Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill, There is such strength and warrantise of skill, CLI. Love is too young to know what conscience is; My nobler part to my great body's treason; "I am content, if thou wilt have it so : I'll say, yon grey is not the morning's eye," &c. STEEVENS. 3 Whence hast thou this BECOMING OF THINGS ILL,] So, in Antony and Cleopatra : 66 vilest things "Become themselves in her." Again, ibidem : "Fie, wrangling queen! "Whom every thing becomes; to chide, to laugh, 4 Who taught thee how to make me love thee more, Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior. The following lines in one of Terence's Comedies contain the same sentiment as the Sonnet before us: O indignum facinus! nunc ego Et illam scelestam esse et me miserum sentio ; Et tædet, et amore ardeo, et prudens, sciens, Vivus, vidensque pereo, nec quid agam scio. MALONE. But rising at thy name, doth point out thee To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side. No want of conscience hold it that I call In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn, CLIII. Cupid laid by his brand, and fell asleep; swear against the thing they see ;] So, in Timon: 7 — more perjur'd I, To swear, against the truth, so foul a lie!] The quarto is here certainly corrupt. It reads-more perjur'd eye, &c. MALONE. * Cupid laid by his brand, and fell asleep ;] This and the following Sonnet are composed of the very same thoughts differently versified. They seem to have been early essays of the poet, who perhaps had not determined which he should prefer. He hardly could have intended to send them both into the world. MALONE. That the poet intended them alike for publication, may be inferred from the following lines in the 105th Sonnet: And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep And grew a seething bath, which yet men prove, The little love-god lying once asleep, Whilst many nymphs that vow'd chaste life to keep, The fairest votary took up that fire Which many legions of true hearts had warm'd; "Since all alike my songs and praises be, Again: "Therefore my verse "One thing expressing, leaves out difference." Again: 9 66 Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument, the help of BATH desir'd, And THITHER hied,] STEEVENS. Query, whether we should read Bath (i. e. the city of that name). The following words seem to au thorise it. STEEVENS. The old copy is certainly right. See the subsequent Sonnet, which contains the same thoughts differently versified : 66 Growing a bath, but I, my mistress' thrall, "Came there for cure." So, before, in the present Sonnet : "And grew a seething bath." MALONE. |