In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 147, a man describes his love as a fever that feeds on whatever keeps it alive, even though it makes him sicker. His rational mind, like a doctor, has tried to prescribe a cure, but he ignores every prescription. Now reason has abandoned him entirely, and he’s left in a state of desperate madness. He realizes, too late, that desire leads to death—something his doctor had warned him about all along. The poem’s mood is frantic and bitter; his thoughts and words spin out of control, disconnected from truth. Only in the final couplet does he face the awful contradiction: he’s been swearing his beloved is fair and radiant, when in reality she’s as black as hell and as dark as night. It’s a raw, self-lacerating confession of loving someone who is toxic, and knowing it all along.
Sonnet 147: My love is as a fever longing still — Summary
My love is as a fever longing still, For that which longer nurseth the disease; Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill, The uncertain sickly appetite to please. My reason, the physician to my love, Angry that his prescriptions are not kept, Hath left me, and I desperate now approve Desire is death, which physic did except. Past cure I am, now Reason is past care, And frantic-mad with evermore unrest; My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are, At random from the truth vainly express'd; For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.