Sonnet 144
The Dark Lady: Reckoning
- 1 Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
- 2 Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
- 3 The better angel is a man right fair,
- 4 The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill.
- 5 To win me soon to hell, my female evil,
- 6 Tempteth my better angel from my side,
- 7 And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
- 8 Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
- 9 And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend,
- 10 Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;
- 11 But being both from me, both to each friend,
- 12 I guess one angel in another's hell:
- 13 Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt,
- 14 Till my bad angel fire my good one out.