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Home  »  The Oxford Shakespeare  »  Sonnet CXLVII

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

“My love is as a fever, longing still”

Sonnet CXLVII

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