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,
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;
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.

CXLV

Those lips that Love’s own hand did make,
Breathed forth the sound that said ‘I hate’,
To me that languish’d for her sake: 
But when she saw my woeful state,
Straight in her heart did mercy come,
Chiding that tongue that ever sweet
Was us’d in giving gentle doom;
And taught it thus anew to greet;
‘I hate’ she alter’d with an end,
That followed it as gentle day,
Doth follow night, who like a fiend
From heaven to hell is flown away. 
  ‘I hate’, from hate away she threw,
  And sav’d my life, saying ‘not you’.

CXLVI

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
My sinful earth these rebel powers array,
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? 
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? 
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge?  Is this thy body’s end? 
Then soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more: 
  So shall thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
  And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.

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,
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;
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.

CXLVIII