Open Source Shakespeare

Sonnets

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Act I, Scene 41

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  • Shakespeare. Those petty 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, 565
    Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed;
    And when a woman woos, what woman's son
    Will sourly leave her till she have prevailed?
    Ay me! but yet thou mightest my seat forbear,
    And chide try beauty and thy straying youth, 570
    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.