English poem
Sonnet 41: Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits
Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits, When I am sometime absent from thy heart, Thy beauty, and thy years full well befits, For still temptation follows where thou art. Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won, Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assail'd; And when a woman woos, what woman's son Will sourly leave her till he have prevail'd? Ay me! but yet thou mightst my seat forbear, And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth, Who lead thee in their riot even there Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth:-- Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee, Thine by thy beauty being false to me.
More by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 38: How can my muse want subject to invent
- Sonnet 39: O! how thy worth with manners may I sing
- Sonnet 3: Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest
- Sonnet 40: Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all
- Sonnet 42: That thou hast her it is not all my grief
- Sonnet 43: When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see
- Sonnet 44: If the dull substance of my flesh were thought
- Sonnet 45: The other two, slight air, and purging fire