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CLII.

In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn,
But thou art twice forsworn, to me love swearing;
In act thy bed-vow broke, and new faith torn,
In vowing new hate after new love bearing.
But why of two oaths' breach do I accuse thee,
When I break twenty? I am perjur'd most;
For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee,
And all my honest faith in thee is lost:

For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness,
Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy;

And, to enlighten thee, gave eyes to blindness,

Or made them swear against the thing they see; For I have sworn thee fair,-more perjur'd I, To swear, against the truth, so foul a lie!

Vide Sonnets 41, 69, 87, 88, 137.

CLIII.

Cupid laid by his brand, and fell asleep:
A maid of Dian's this advantage found,
And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep
In a cold valley-fountain of that ground;
Which borrow'd from this holy fire of Love
A dateless lively heat, still to endure,

And grew a seething bath, which yet men prove
Against strange maladies a sovereign cure.

But at my mistress' eye Love's brand new-fir'd,
The boy for trial needs would touch my breast;
I, sick withal, the help of bath desir'd,
And thither hied, a sad distemper'd guest,

But found no cure: the bath for my help lies
Where Cupid got new fire,-my mistress' eyes.

Vide REMARKS, pp. 47, 66, 89: also Sonnets 24, 122.

CLIV.

The little Love-god, lying once asleep,

Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,

Whilst many nymphs that vow'd chaste life to keep Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand

The fairest votary took up that fire

Which many legions of true hearts had warm'd;
And so the general of hot desire

Was, sleeping, by a virgin hand disarm'd.

This brand she quenched in a cool well by,
Which from Love's fire took heat perpetual,
Growing a bath and healthful remedy

For men diseas'd; but I, my mistress' thrall,
Came there for cure, and this by that I prove,
Love's fire heats water, water cools not love.

Vide REMARKS, p. 66: also Sonnets 24, 122.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE author of the Remarks on the Sonnets of Shakespeare thinks the question discussed in those remarks of sufficient importance to justify some further attempt to confirm the view therein presented, his attention having been called to a few of the sonnets supposed to present special difficulties not fully explained. He, therefore, makes the following additional remarks and explanations; and, first, in reference to the 67th and 68th Sonnets, which read:

67. Ah, wherefore, &c.

68. Thus is his cheek, &c.

The poet of the Sonnets, after stating a mere possibility in the 104th Sonnet, concludes with the two following lines:

104. For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred,—

Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.

These lines were addressed to the "age" in which the poet lived, and that age he calls "unbred," evidently meaning uncultivated, in comparison with some preceding age, which he as evidently refers to in the last line of the sonnet as 66 Beauty's Summer.”

That the reference is to some former age, by the designation of it as Beauty's Summer, may be seen by the closing lines of the 67th Sonnet, without pointing out other evidences, thus:

67. O, him she stores, to show what wealth she had
In days long since, before these last so bad.

The reference here (to "him") is to the object addressed by the poet of the sonnets, under a figure, in the 1st Sonnet, as "Beauty's Rose"; but which in the 20th Sonnet is called the "Master-Mistress of the poet's passion (or love); and this, we say, is not a person, but a mystical expression for an object conceived as double, masculine and feminine in one, which object, being thus conceived, the poet sometimes addresses in the masculine and sometimes in the feminine gender. He sometimes speaks as if to the object, and at times to each part separately, and sometimes he makes one part, as it were, address another, as in Sonnets 151, 136, 42, 146, 144, 46, 47,

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