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Home  »  The Oxford Shakespeare  »  Sonnet CXIV

William Shakespeare (1564–1616). The Oxford Shakespeare: Poems. 1914.

“Or whether doth my mind, being crown’d with you”

Sonnet CXIV

OR whether doth my mind, being crown’d with you  
Drink up the monarch’s plague, this flattery?  
Or whether shall I say, mine eye saith true,  
And that your love taught it this alchymy,  
To make of monsters and things indigest          5
Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble,  
Creating every bad a perfect best,  
As fast as objects to his beams assemble?  
O! ’tis the first, ’tis flattery in my seeing,  
And my great mind most kingly drinks it up:   10
Mine eye well knows what with his gust is ’greeing,  
And to his palate doth prepare the cup:  
  If it be poison’d, ’tis the lesser sin  
  That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.