Page:Shakespeare's Sonnets (1923) Yale.djvu/80

70 

O, call not me to justify the wrong

That thy unkindness lays upon my heart;

Wound me not with thine eye, but with thy tongue:

Use power with power, and slay me not by art.

Tell me thou lov'st elsewhere; but in my sight,

Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside:

What need'st thou wound with cunning, when thy might

Is more than my o'erpress'd defence can bide?

Let me excuse thee: ah! my love well knows

Her pretty looks have been my enemies;

And therefore from my face she turns my foes,

That they elsewhere might dart their injuries:

Yet do not so; but since I am near slain,

Kill me outright with looks, and rid my pain.

 

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.

 4 by art: by cunning  '''140. 4' pity-wanting pain: unpitied suffering''

11 ill-wresting: maliciously misconstruing 