Sonnet 147
My love is as a fever, longing still
desire
madness
illness
self-deception
My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
The uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,
At random from the truth vainly express'd;
For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
What It Means
Shakespeare's desire is a fever that wants what makes it worse. Reason is the doctor advising him to stop, but he's fired reason and gone back to the source of his illness. He has been feeding the fever. Reason abandoned him long ago. The diagnosis in the final couplet: I thought you were beautiful and virtuous; I was wrong. You are as dark as hell, and as black as night.
Context
Part of the Dark Lady sequence. The medical metaphor of fever — desire that feeds itself — runs through several of the Dark Lady sonnets.
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