Sonnet 147
The Dark Lady: Reckoning
- 1 My love is as a fever longing still,
- 2 For that which longer nurseth the disease;
- 3 Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
- 4 The uncertain sickly appetite to please.
- 5 My reason, the physician to my love,
- 6 Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
- 7 Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
- 8 Desire is death, which physic did except.
- 9 Past cure I am, now Reason is past care,
- 10 And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
- 11 My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,
- 12 At random from the truth vainly express'd;
- 13 For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
- 14 Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.