Sonnet · Dark Lady Sonnets

Sonnet 139

O! call not me to justify the wrong

That thy unkindness lays upon my heart;

Wound me not with thine eye, but with thy tongue:

Use power with power, and slay me not by art,

Tell me thou lov’st elsewhere; but in my sight,

Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside:

What need’st thou wound with cunning, when thy might

Is more than my o’erpress’d defence can bide?

Let me excuse thee: ah! my love well knows

Her pretty looks have been mine enemies;

And therefore from my face she turns my foes,

That they elsewhere might dart their injuries:

Yet do not so; but since I am near slain,

Kill me outright with looks, and rid my pain.

What it's about

The speaker is so devastated by the dark lady's rejection that he'd rather be killed outright than slowly tortured by her mixed signals and averted glances. He's asking her to be cruel completely rather than cruel in fragments—to acknowledge she doesn't love him plainly, or to wound him fully with her beauty instead of this half-hearted turning away. It's a paradox: he wants mercy through finality.

In plain English

Don't ask me to defend the cruelty you've inflicted on me. If you're going to hurt me, do it honestly—use your words, not your beauty. You're already so powerful over me that you don't need to be cunning. Just tell me straight that you love someone else.

I know your beautiful eyes have always been my undoing. So I understand why you turn your gaze away from me—you're redirecting that destructive power elsewhere, sparing me a little. But I'm begging you: stop holding back. You've nearly destroyed me already. Finish it. Look at me with full force and put me out of my misery.

Lines that stick

  • Wound me not with thine eye, but with thy tongue
  • Her pretty looks have been mine enemies
  • Kill me outright with looks, and rid my pain

Themes

  • cruelty
  • beauty
  • love
  • death
  • rejection
In the app

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