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Shakespeare's Sonnets - Sonnet 144
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Shakespeare's Sonnets - Sonnet 144Sonnet 144
144
Synopsis:
The poet’s three-way relationship with the mistress and the young man is here presented as an allegory of a person tempted by a good and a bad angel.
Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still.
The better angel is a man right fair,
4The worser spirit a woman colored 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,
8Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
And whether that my angel be turned fiend
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;
But being both from me, both to each friend,
12I 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.