Shakespeare's Sonnets (1923) Yale/Text/Sonnet 140
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For other versions of this work, see Sonnet 140 (Shakespeare).
140
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. 4
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; 8
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. 12
That I may not be so, nor thou belied,
Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.
140. 4 pity-wanting pain: unpitied suffering
11 ill-wresting: maliciously misconstruing