Sonnet 151
Love is too young to know what conscience is;
desire
conscience
body
sexuality
Love is too young to know what conscience is;
Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?
Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,
Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove:
For, thou betraying me, I do betray
My nobler part to my gross body's treason;
My soul doth tell my body that he may
Triumph in love; flesh stays no father reason;
But, rising at thy name, doth point out thee
As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride,
He is contented thy poor drudge to be,
To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.
No want of conscience hold it that I call
Her 'love' for whose dear love I rise and fall.
What It Means
Love is too young to know about conscience. The body rises at the mention of her name — literally, in one of Shakespeare's most physically explicit poems. He will be the body's 'triumph' and her vassal, rising and falling at her will. The poem is about the power of physical desire to override judgment.
Context
Part of the Dark Lady sequence. Sonnet 151 is among the most sexually explicit in the sequence.
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