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Home  »  The Oxford Shakespeare  »  Sonnet CXLIV

William Shakespeare (1564–1616). The Oxford Shakespeare: Poems. 1914.

“Two loves I have of comfort and despair”

Sonnet CXLIV

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