Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Who, like two spirits, do suggest me still.
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman, colour'd ill.
To win me soon to hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side.
.... Love is too young to know what conscience is....
For thou betraying me, I do betray
My nobler part to my gross body's treason....
He is contented thy poor drudge to be,
To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.
[203]: Cette interprétation nouvelle des Sonnets est due aux conjectures ingénieuses et solides de M. Chasles.
[204]: Love is my sin. (142e sonnet.)
[205]: Miranda, Desdémona, Viola. Premières paroles du duc dans la Nuit des Rois:
DUKE.
If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.—
That strain again;—it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing, and giving odour.—Enough, no more,
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou!
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soever,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute, so full of shapes is fancy,
That it alone is high-fantastical.
[206]: Témoignages de Jonson et de Chettle. Melliferous, honey-tongued. Voy. Halliwell, 183.