The speaker is angry at Cupid for being slow to act: the woman he adores has wounded him with her eyes, but her own heart remains untouched, and she seems to enjoy his suffering. In a fit of frustration, he doesn’t just pray—he conjures. He summons the god by every dark and powerful oath he can think of, from the Styx and Hecate’s names to the tears of Proserpine and Cupid’s own beloved Psyche. The language is half desperate plea, half comic ultimatum: if Cupid doesn’t make her fall in love, then Cupid himself should be damned. The mood teeters between genuine torment and self-aware exaggeration, as if the speaker knows how absurd it is to threaten a god. It’s the sound of someone so lovesick that only a theatrical, spellbinding demand feels equal to the ache.
Sonnet XXXVI: Thou Purblind Boy — Summary
Cupid Conjured
Thou purblind boy, since thou hast been so slack To wound her heart, whose eyes have wounded me, And suffer'd her to glory in my wrack, Thus to my aid I lastly conjure thee: By hellish Styx, by which the Thund'rer swears, By thy fair mother's unavoided power, By Hecate's names, by Proserpine's sad tears When she was rapt to the infernal bower, By thine own loved Psyche, by the fires Spent on thine alters flaming up to heav'n, By all true lovers' sighs, vows, and desires, By all the wounds that ever thou hast giv'n: I conjure thee by all that I have nam'd To make her love, or, Cupid, be thou damn'd.