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Sonnet 140
Project Gutenberg eBook #1041, Shakespeare's Sonnets
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Source: Project Gutenberg eBook #1041, Shakespeare's Sonnets Source URL: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1041 Public domain basis: Complete text of the 154 sonnets. Public domain. Coverage: Complete individual poem extracted from parent edition shakespeares-sonnets at bytes 87136-87768; checksum 0f57591ac4fa4d69c346d5f4eb88d791c80883f4b0c813e80f588978bfddf884.
# Sonnet 140
Sonnet 140
CXL
Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain; Lest sorrow lend me words, and words express The manner of my pity-wanting pain. If I might teach thee wit, better it were, Though not to love, yet love to tell me so, As testy sick men, when their deaths be near, No news but health from their physicians know. For, if I should despair, I should grow mad, And in my madness might speak ill of thee; Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad, Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be. That I may not be so, nor thou belied, Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.