Since I have been working my way through Shakespeare’s sonnets, I have been almost shocked to find how many are new to me. I read English for my degree and have a Masters, and yet there is this big gap in my knowledge, which I’m now trying to fill. It seems strange that such a limited number of sonnets are included in anthologies, the same ones crop up time and again, and yet there are others which are just wonderful which surely should be included in the general body of English poetry to be studied in schools, colleges and Universities.
Sonnet CXLIV
Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.
To win me soon to hell, my female evil,
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
And whether that my angel be turned fiend,
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;
But being both from me, both to each friend,
I guess one angel in another’s hell:
Yet this shall I ne’er know, but live in doubt,
Till my bad angel fire my good one out.
William Shakespeare
Lois Elsden 