But thou art twice forsworn to me love swearing,

  In act thy bed-vow broke and new faith torn,

  In vowing new hate after new love bearing.

  But why of two oaths’ breach do I accuse thee,

  When I break twenty? I am perjured most,

  For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee,

  And all my honest faith in thee is lost;

  For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness,

  Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy,

  And, to enlighten thee, gave eyes to blindness,

  Or made them swear against the thing they see.

  For I have sworn thee fair: more perjured eye,

  To swear against the truth so foul a lie.

  152

  MODERN TEXT

  I know I’m breaking a promise by loving you, but you, swearing you love me, are breaking two promises: cheating on your husband by leaving his bed, then breaking your promise to your new lover by vowing to hate him. But why am I accusing you of breaking two oaths when I break twenty? I am perjured the most, because all of my vows are only made to mislead and exploit you; I’m no longer true to you. For I have sworn great oaths about how kind you are, oaths about your love, your faithfulness, your constancy. And to make you look better I blinded myself, swearing to the opposite of what I actually saw. For I have sworn that you are beautiful; my eye is doubly a liar, offering such a foul lie after swearing to tell the truth.

  153

  ORIGINAL TEXT

  Cupid laid by his brand and fell asleep.

  A maid of Dian’s this advantage found,

  And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep

  In a cold valley-fountain of that ground,

  Which borrowed from this holy fire of love

  A dateless lively heat, still to endure,

  And grew a seething bath, which yet men prove

  Against strange maladies a sovereign cure.

  But at my mistress’ eye love’s brand new fired,

  The boy for trial needs would touch my breast;

  I, sick withal, the help of bath desired,

  And thither hied, a sad distempered guest,

  But found no cure; the bath for my help lies

  Where Cupid got new fire—my mistress’ eye.

  153

  MODERN TEXT

  Cupid put down his torch and fell asleep. One of the nymphs who serve Diana took advantage of this situation and quickly plunged Cupid’s love-inducing flame in a nearby cold spring, which thus acquired a never-ending heat and became a bubbling hot bath that men still use to cure diseases. But at a glance from my mistress, Cupid’s torch fired up again, and Cupid decided to test whether his torch was working by touching my heart with it. I became sick with love and wanted the bath to ease my discomfort. I went to the spring as a sad, sick guest but found no cure. The only thing that could help me is the thing that gave Cupid his new fire: a glance from my mistress’s eye.

  Sonnets 153 and 154 are full of double entendres of sexual intercourse followed by venereal disease.

  Diana is the goddess of chastity and virginity, so the nymphs devoted to her are opposed to Cupid and erotic love, represented by his torch.

  154

  ORIGINAL TEXT

  The little love-god lying once asleep

  Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,

  Whilst many nymphs that vowed chaste life to keep

  Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand

  The fairest votary took up that fire,

  Which many legions of true hearts had warmed;

  And so the general of hot desire

  Was, sleeping, by a virgin hand disarmed.

  This brand she quenchèd in a cool well by,

  Which from love’s fire took heat perpetual,

  Growing a bath and healthful remedy

  For men diseased; but I, my mistress’ thrall,

  Came there for cure, and this by that I prove:

  Love’s fire heats water; water cools not love.

  FINIS.

  154

  MODERN TEXT

  Once, while sleeping, little Cupid put down his love-inducing torch while many of Diana’s nymphs, who had all made lifelong vows of chastity, came tripping by. But the most beautiful of Diana’s nymphs picked up that fire that had warmed the hearts of legions of faithful lovers. In this fashion, the commander of hot desire was disarmed by the hand of a virgin as he was sleeping. She quenched this torch in a cool spring nearby, and the spring took a perpetual heat from love’s fire. It turned into a hot bath and healthy remedy for diseased men. But when I, enslaved by my mistress, went to the bath to be cured, this is what I learned: Love’s fire heats water, but water doesn’t cool love.

  THE END

  LITERATURE GUIDES

  1984

  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

  The Aeneid

  All Quiet on the Western Front

  And Then There Were None

  Angela’s Ashes

  Animal Farm

  Anna Karenina

  Anne of Green Gables

  Anthem

  Antony and Cleopatra

  Aristotle’s Ethics

  As I Lay Dying

  As You Like It

  Atlas Shrugged

  The Autobiography of Malcolm X

  The Awakening

  The Bean Trees

  The Bell Jar

  Beloved

  Beowulf

  Billy Budd

  Black Boy

  Bless Me, Ultima

  The Bluest Eye

  Brave New World

  The Brothers Karamazov

  The Call of the Wild

  Candide

  The Canterbury Tales

  Catch-22

  The Catcher in the Rye

  The Chocolate War

  The Chosen

  Cold Mountain

  Cold Sassy Tree

  The Color Purple

  The Count of Monte Cristo

  Crime and Punishment

  The Crucible

  Cry, the Beloved Country

  Cyrano de Bergerac

  David Copperfield

  Death of a Salesman

  The Death of Socrates

  The Diary of a Young Girl

  A Doll’s House

  Don Quixote

  Dr. Faustus

  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

  Dracula

  Dune

  East of Eden

  Edith Hamilton’s Mythology

  Emma

  Ethan Frome

  Fahrenheit 451

  Fallen Angels

  A Farewell to Arms

  Farewell to Manzanar

  Flowers for Algernon

  For Whom the Bell Tolls

  The Fountainhead

  Frankenstein

  The Giver

  The Glass Menagerie

  Gone With the Wind

  The Good Earth

  The Grapes of Wrath

  Great Expectations

  The Great Gatsby

  Greek Classics

  Grendel

  Gulliver’s Travels

  Hamlet

  The Handmaid’s Tale

  Hard Times

  Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

  Heart of Darkness

  Henry IV, Part I

  Henry V

  Hiroshima

  The Hobbit

  The House of Seven Gables

  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

  The Iliad

  Inferno

  Inherit the Wind

  Invisible Man

  Jane Eyre

  Johnny Tremain

  The Joy Luck Club

  Julius Caesar

  The Jungle

  The Killer Angels

  King Lear

  The Last of the Mohicans

  Les Miserables

  A Lesson Before Dying

  The Little Prince

  Little Women

  Lord of the Flies

  The Lord of the Rings

  Macbeth

  Madame Bovary

  A Man for All Seasons

  The Mayor of Casterbridge

  The Merchant of Venice

  A Midsummer Night’s Dream

  Moby Dick

  Much Ado About Nothing

  My Antonia

  Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

  Native Son

  The New Testament

  Night

  Notes from Underground

  The Odyssey

  The Oedipus Plays

  Of Mice and Men

  The Old Man and the Sea

  The Old Testament

  Oliver Twist

  The Once and Future King

  One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

  One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

  One Hundred Years of Solitude

  Othello Our Town

  The Outsiders

  Paradise Lost

  A Passage to India

  The Pearl

  The Picture of Dorian Gray

  Poe’s Short Stories

  A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

  Pride and Prejudice

  The Prince

  A Raisin in the Sun

  The Red Badge of Courage

  The Republic

  Richard III

  Robinson Crusoe

  Romeo and Juliet

  The Scarlet Letter

  A Separate Peace

  Silas Marner

  Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

  Slaughterhouse-Five

  Snow Falling on Cedars

  Song of Solomon

  The Sound and the Fury

  Steppenwolf

  The Stranger

  Streetcar Named Desire

  The Sun Also Rises

  A Tale of Two Cities

  The Taming of the Shrew

  The Tempest

  Tess of the d’Ubervilles

  The Things They Carried

  Their Eyes Were Watching God

  Things Fall Apart

  To Kill a Mockingbird

  To the Lighthouse

  Treasure Island

  Twelfth Night

  Ulysses

  Uncle Tom’s Cabin

  Walden

  War and Peace

  Wuthering Heights

  A Yellow Raft in Blue Water

 

 

  William Shakespeare, Sonnets

 

 

  Thank you for reading books on GrayCity.Net
Share this book with friends