Page 2086 - Shakespeare - Vol. 4

140 IT

Be wise as thou art cruel, do not press

My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain,
Lest sorrow lend me words and words express
The manner of my pity-wanting pain.
If I might teach thee wit, better it were

Though not to love, yet, love, to tell me so;
As testy sick men when their deaths be near
No news but health from their physicians know.
For if I should despair I should go mad,

And in my madness might speak ill of thee;
Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad
Mad slanderers by mad ears believèd be.
That I may not be so, nor thou belied,

Bear thine eyes straight though thy proud heart go wide.