Sonnet #139

[Admin]

Sonnet #139

CXXXIX.

O, call not me to justify the wrong
That thy unkindness lays upon my heart;
Wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue;
Use power with power and slay me not by art.
Tell me thou lovest elsewhere, but in my sight,
Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside:
What need'st thou wound with cunning when thy might
Is more than my o'er-press'd defense can bide?
Let me excuse thee: ah! my love well knows
Her pretty looks have been mine enemies,
And therefore from my face she turns my foes,
That they elsewhere might dart their injuries:
Yet do not so; but since I am near slain,
Kill me outright with looks and rid my pain.

More... (http://www.sonnetaday.com)

[dramasnot6]

Aww...I feel as though I can interpret this poem as being kind of shallow, but I don't. When I read it I think of unrequited love...someone hopelessly in love who worships from afar, it is sad and the persona is constructed,in my mind, kind of pathetic and weak at the force of love...but it is realistic too. There is nothing to make anyone a fool like love.

[Lady Glynde]

This isn't perchance where "if looks could kill" comes from, is it??

[thom]

i wouldnt be suprised, given how many sayings that are in common use originate in shakespeare.
Im always struck by the brooding sense that something is about to happen in the sonnets..like time is constantly beckoning just beyond the temporal scenes he presents us with, giving them an air of meance aswell as pleassure. The awareness of the transience of beauty pervades all his later work.. introducing doubt, self-pity and uncertainty..
When i read this i think of Jaques from as you like it, weeping at the death of a deer, dispondant, melancholic, able to see beauty all around him but struck by an awareness that beauty must fade..nowhere is the 'price of experience' more apparent than here. The first line, after its initial inhale of ohh is like one long exhale... The initial prayer like pleading 'to wound me not' and then final line 'kill my outright with looks and rid my pain' is a nice chartered progression into acceptance that death must be, but that the power of prayer will grant him mercy and 'justify the wrong.'