The speaker feels possessed by an evil spirit—his lover’s beauty. It haunts him without rest, whispering temptations that push him toward every kind of ill. Even when he tries to exorcise it, the torment only grows, punishing him more severely. The beauty lays his own despairs before his eyes and drives him toward a sudden death: first drowning in tears, then giving up his breath in sighs. The poem’s mood is claustrophobic and obsessive, an inescapable inner haunting. The final image—“good-wicked spirit, sweet angel-devil”—captures the cruel paradox: a beauty that is at once angelic and demonic, relentlessly luring him into destruction. It’s a love not of comfort but of unending, painful restlessness.
Idea XX: An evil spirit, your beauty, haunts me still — Summary
An evil spirit, your beauty, haunts me still, Wherewith, alas, I have been long possess'd, Which ceaseth not to tempt me to each ill, Nor gives me once but one poor minute's rest. In me it speaks, whether I sleep or wake; And when by means to drive it out I try, With greater torments then it me doth take, And tortures me in most extremity. Before my face it lays down my despairs, And hastes me on unto a sudden death; Now tempting me to drown myself in tears, And then in sighing to give up my breath. Thus am I still provok'd to every evil By this good-wicked spirit, sweet angel-devil.