Читать книгу The Complete Works of Shakespeare онлайн

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Provokes me to this threefold perjury.

Love bade me swear, and Love bids me forswear.

O sweet-suggesting Love, if thou hast sinn’d,

Teach me, thy tempted subject, to excuse it!

At first I did adore a twinkling star,

But now I worship a celestial sun.

Unheedful vows may heedfully be broken,

And he wants wit that wants resolved will

To learn his wit t’ exchange the bad for better.

Fie, fie, unreverend tongue, to call her bad,

Whose sovereignty so oft thou hast preferr’d

With twenty thousand soul-confirming oaths.

I cannot leave to love, and yet I do;

But there I leave to love where I should love.

Julia I lose, and Valentine I lose:

If I keep them, I needs must lose myself;

If I lose them, thus find I by their loss—

For Valentine, myself; for Julia, Silvia.

I to myself am dearer than a friend,

For love is still most precious in itself,

And Silvia (witness heaven, that made her fair)

Shows Julia but a swarthy Ethiope.

I will forget that Julia is alive,

Rememb’ring that my love to her is dead;