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 farther 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.
Return to the William Shakespeare Home Page, or . . . Read the next poem; Sonnet 152