The Full Text of “Sonnet 147: My love is as a fever, longing still”
1My love is as a fever, longing still
2For that which longer nurseth the disease;
3Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
4Th' uncertain sickly appetite to please.
5My reason, the physician to my love,
6Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
7Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
8Desire is death, which physic did except.
9Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
10And, frantic-mad with evermore unrest,
11My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,
12At random from the truth vainly expressed.
13 For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
14 Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
The Full Text of “Sonnet 147: My love is as a fever, longing still”
1My love is as a fever, longing still
2For that which longer nurseth the disease;
3Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
4Th' uncertain sickly appetite to please.
5My reason, the physician to my love,
6Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
7Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
8Desire is death, which physic did except.
9Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
10And, frantic-mad with evermore unrest,
11My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,
12At random from the truth vainly expressed.
13 For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
14 Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
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“Sonnet 147: My love is as a fever, longing still” Introduction
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"Sonnet 147" is part of a series of Shakespeare's sonnets addressed to a figure known as the "Dark Lady." In the poem, the speaker compares his love and desire for this person to an illness, one that's robbed him of the ability to act or think rationally. The speaker doesn't even really want help—he just wants more of the same love that's making him so sick! The poem, then, presents obsessive love (and lust) as a painful, irrational, and decidedly unhealthy experience. And while many of Shakespeare's earlier sonnets are filled with adoring praise for a figure known as the "Fair Youth," this poem is far less kind to its subject. In the closing couplet, he turns on the "Dark Lady" and bitterly accuses her of being "black as hell" and "dark as night."
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“Sonnet 147: My love is as a fever, longing still” Summary
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My love is like a sickness that wants nothing more than the one thing that will make this disease last longer. It feeds on the very thing that's making me so ill, in an attempt to satisfy my sickening appetite.
My sense of reason—which is like a doctor treating my love sickness—is furious that I haven't followed any of his advice. He's abandoned me—and now I know that my desire will kill me, something he could have prevented.
I can't be cured, and I don't even care. I'm frantic and anxious, constantly restless. I think and sound just like a madman, spouting out pointless nonsense.
Because I thought you were beautiful and virtuous, but you're as black and evil as hell itself, and as dark as the night.
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“Sonnet 147: My love is as a fever, longing still” Themes
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Love and Desire vs. Reason
Part of Shakespeare’s “Dark Lady” sonnet sequence, “Sonnet 147” describes love sickness at its most maddening and frightening. The speaker says his “love” is like a disease that's robbed him of his ability to act rationally. Despite being fully aware that his desire is making him sick and mad, he can’t help but long for more. The poem thus presents the dark side of love, depicting it as an all-consuming force capable of defying reason—and, in doing so, filling people with both passion and misery.
The speaker presents himself as a sick patient beyond saving. He deems his “love” a “fever” that makes him “long[]” for the very same thing that made him so sick in the first place (i.e., more love!). He's trapped in a destructive cycle that overrides his sense of reason.
The poem, then, shows how love can destroy a person’s capacity to think or act logically. The speaker, after all, knows that this relationship is damaging and toxic. He even personifies his own sense of reason as a doctor who's finally abandoned the speaker because he won’t take his medicine. The speaker can logically understand that his desire is unhealthy, but he simply can't stop indulging his passion.
Overcome with this desire, the speaker’s mind has travelled far “from the truth.” By hinting that his desire has put him out of touch with reality, the poem implies that the speaker has overlooked certain things about his lover. Passion, in other words, has made him willing to ignore the possibility that his lover is undeserving of his affection.
The speaker sometimes views his lover as “fair” and “bright”—in short, like a good thing—even if the lover is, metaphorically speaking, “black as hell” and “dark as night.” Some readings of the poem interpret the closing couplet as an accusation of betrayal or deceit, as if, perhaps, the speaker’s lover has intentionally wronged him (by sleeping with someone else, for example). But the speaker, like countless wronged lovers before and after him, exists in a “frantic-mad” state of perpetual “unrest.” Even if he can see that he’s been wronged, he still can’t change how he feels—and this disconnect, understandably, makes him feel like he is going insane.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Sonnet 147: My love is as a fever, longing still”
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Lines 1-4
My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease;
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
Th' uncertain sickly appetite to please.The poem opens by declaring that the speaker's love, by which he means something more like sexual passion and infatuation, is like a feverish disease. In other words, the speaker, often taken to be Shakespeare himself, has got it bad.
What's more, this love-fever traps the speaker in a destructive cycle. The speaker longs for the exact thing that "nurseth"—feeds or nourishes—this fever: his lover. Indulging in his love might briefly satisfy his longing but, soon enough, that longing would return even more strongly, having been fed "on that which preserve the ill" (that is, having gotten a taste of the very thing that made the speaker so lovesick in the first place). His "love" and his "longing" are thus inseparable, the one feeding on the other like a snake eating its own tail.
The slippery, alliterating /l/ sound ("love," "longing") makes this link clear. Consonance of the same sound appears throughout this quatrain ("still," "ill," "sickly," "please"), imbuing the lines with the speaker's slippery desire.
The polyptoton of "longing" and "longer," meanwhile, emphasizes the fact that this state is ongoing. The speaker's "longing" for "love" makes the situation go on "longer," seemingly without end. It's worth noting, too, that the "fever" has subtly sexual connotations through making the sufferer feel hot (and, perhaps, sending them to bed!). The poem is also alluding to—and subverting—the typical Elizabethan advice to "starve a fever and feed a cold." In failing to "starve" his "fever," the speaker is keeping himself sick.
Love here, then, is not joyful, youthful, and carefree, but rather a kind of parasite destroying its host from within. The poem's meter subtly reflects this idea. As with most sonnets, the poem is written in iambic pentameter—meaning there should be five feet, each with a da-DUM syllable pattern, per line.
But to emphasize the greediness of this sickly (sexual) appetite, line 3 varies swaps a trochee into its first foot, placing the stress on the line's first syllable instead of the second:
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
This metrical variation surprises the reader, emphasizing the eager destructiveness of the speaker's love-disease.
Then, in line 4, the poem uses more consonance and assonance to emphasize just how "sickly" this appetite really is:
Th' uncertain sickly appetite to please.
Try saying this out loud. The hissing /s/ sibilance perhaps suggests saliva, while the /t/ and /p/ sounds have a sharp, biting quality that evokes insatiable hunger.
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Lines 5-7
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, -
Lines 7-8
and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except. -
Lines 9-12
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 expressed. -
Lines 13-14
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
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“Sonnet 147: My love is as a fever, longing still” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
The poem uses alliteration to link concepts and words together. The speaker is stuck in a perpetual state of "unrest" caused by his love sickness. It's a state that is cyclical, with the speaker craving more of the very thing that makes him sick, thereby making him more sick, which leads to more craving! Repeated sounds like alliteration thus suggest the presence of a repetitive pattern of behavior.
This effect is especially clear in the opening two lines:
My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease;"Love" is linked to "longing," which in turn joins up with "longer." The speaker's love creates his longing which only prolongs his suffering, which makes him feel his desire more strongly... and so on until infinity, or death. The slippery, liquid /l/ sounds throughout these lines also subtly evoke sexual intimacy.
In line 8, the speaker says that "Desire is death." Here, too, alliteration joins the two concepts together. This is the speaker's point—that desire and death are inseparable. The /d/ is a dull, thudding sound, befitting the mention of being dead.
Line 9's alliteration pops up alongside parallelism, as the speaker says he's "past cure" and "past care." In other words, it's too late for the speaker; his love sickness is here to stay, and he's in so deep that he doesn't even care. The alliteration draws attention to these phases. There's only one vowel of difference between these phrases, making them sound almost like gibberish—the ravings of a madman (which the speaker feels he is becoming). Line 11's alliteration has a similar effect, linking the speaker "My" with his own perception of his madness ("madmen's").
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Allusion
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Assonance
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Caesura
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Consonance
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Extended Metaphor
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Parallelism
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Simile
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"Sonnet 147: My love is as a fever, longing still" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Nurseth
- Doth
- Preserve
- The ill
- Reason
- Physician
- Prescriptions
- Hath
- Physic
- Physic
- Did except
- Past
- Frantic-mad
- Evermore
- Discourse
- Random
- Vainly
- Sworn thee fair
- Art
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"Nurses"—normally in the sense of providing care, but here meaning perpetuating the disease itself.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Sonnet 147: My love is as a fever, longing still”
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Form
This poem is a Shakespearean sonnet, meaning the structure can be divided into three quatrains and a closing couplet. As is typical for a sonnet, the first three quatrains build upon a single idea—here, that the speaker's love is a kind of illness.
The closing couplet, called the turn of volta of the poem, then responds to that idea in some way. Here, the speaker shifts in the final two lines away from discussing his illness to criticizing its cause: the lover who is causing the speaker so much pain.
This sonnet is a bit unusual in that it's so full of suffering, anger, and insult. By the time Shakespeare was writing them, sonnets already had a reputation for generally being positive love poems. This sonnet (and others in the sequence) breaks with that tradition, steering clear of any sense of joy, romance, or admiration.
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Meter
As is typical of Shakespeare's sonnets, this poem uses iambic pentameter. That means each line has five iambs, feet with an unstressed-stressed syllable pattern (da-DUM). Take line 1:
My love | is as | a fev- | er, long- | ing still
In general, iambic pentameter provides a steady rhythmic pulse that kind of fades into the background—when it's working well, it's not too obvious. This steadiness provides the poet with an opportunity to create surprises and dramatic moments though varying the meter, as is the case here.
Line 3, for example, features a trochee (DUM-da) instead of an iamb in its first foot:
Feeding | on that | which doth | preserve | the ill,
The speaker's feverish sexual appetite is insatiable. Bringing the stress forward here suggests the overpowering strength of his desire, making "feeding" more active, hungry, and hurried.
Line 6 echoes the variation in line 3. Think about what people are like when they are angry; they might move about in a fast and erratic way, conveying their troubled state of mind. The speaker's "reason," personified as a doctor, is so "angry" that it's abandoned him. Another trochee in the first foot again makes the line feel more forceful:
Angry | that his | prescrip- |tions are | not kept
Notice how this sounds more angry than if, for example, the first word were something like "irate." It would mean the same thing, but it wouldn't sound as effective.
There is always more than one way to scan a poem, and changing the stresses can have subtle effects on the meaning. Line 9, for example, could receive two stresses on "past care"—this might sound more dramatic and heavy than "past care," which could sound more forlorn and resigned.
Do note that some lines that might look metrically funky are actually just the result of different punctuation/pronunciation during Shakespeare's time. Line 4's "Th' uncertain" should scan like this: "Th'uncertain." "Th'" and "un" make one sound together, indicating by that apostrophe, thus maintaining the iambic pentameter.
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Rhyme Scheme
This poem follows the rhyme scheme of a typical Shakespearean sonnet, which can be divided into three quatrains and an ending couplet:
ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
Generally speaking, the rhymes propel the poem forward, giving it momentum that is brought to a dramatic close by the one-two punch of that couplet. Those quick final rhymes give this ending a bitter, venomous quality, matching the sudden directness of tone (the speaker, who hasn't addressed anyone specifically yet, suddenly aims his words straight at his lover).
Rhymes also create conceptual links between two words or ideas. The rhyme of "disease" and "please" in lines 2 and 4, for example, makes clear that the speaker's sickness is completely tied up with his lust for sexual pleasure. The disease is the lust for pleasure. In the last couplet, the rhymes also highlight the contrast between "bright[ness]" and darkness ("night"). Essentially, the speaker reevaluates his lover, realizing how much pain desiring her puts him in. The rhyme takes this contrast between what he once thought of her and how he now feels and makes it all the starker.
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“Sonnet 147: My love is as a fever, longing still” Speaker
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Given this sonnet's place within Shakespeare's Dark Lady sequence (see Resources for more), the speaker is generally read as male. There has always been, and will always be, great speculation about whether the sonnets are autobiographical or not. In truth, it doesn't really matter when it comes to the experience of reading them. The poem itself doesn't tell readers the speaker's gender, age, or occupation—which allows anyone who's experienced this kind of reason-robbing infatuation to identify with it.
What the poem does tell readers is that speaker is lovesick—and he's got it bad. This love sickness is also more like desire-sickness; his feelings are carnal and lustful, not romantic and loving. The speaker constructs an elaborate extended metaphor to describe his state, pitching his love as a fever and his reason, which has left him out of frustration at being ignored, as his (ex-)doctor. He knows that his desire is what's making him sick, yet all he wants is more.
The speaker claims to have the "thoughts" and "discourse" of "madmen"—that is, he believes that what he thinks and says out loud proves he's going insane with feverish desire. In actual fact, though, the speaker is extremely eloquent and perceptive, able to talk honestly and authentically about his inability to act in his own interest. It's the fact that he doesn't listen to his better judgment that is making him feel mad.
For the most part, the poem doesn't have a specific addressee. In a way, the speaker is talking to himself—as befitting his fractured state of mind. But in the last couplet he seems to turn directly to his lover, aiming bitter and venomous words at her. He views her as the root cause of all his problems—and he's probably never wanted her more.
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“Sonnet 147: My love is as a fever, longing still” Setting
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There isn't really a strong sense of place or time here, though the conventional wisdom alluded to in lines 3 and 9 do give the poem an Elizabethan backdrop (along with the actual language here, of course!).
The speaker's words construct the poem's elaborate extended metaphor—that love is a disease, and reason is a doctor (who, in this case, has abandoned his patient). It's a deeply psychological poem, showing a fractured speaker tortured by his insatiable desire. Accordingly, one way of thinking of the setting is that the poem takes place in the speaker's mind. That said, the poem does borrow elements of setting from its metaphor. The poem gives the impression of the speaker as metaphorically bedridden, knocking on death's door with a burning fever.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Sonnet 147: My love is as a fever, longing still”
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Literary Context
"Sonnet 147" appears in a section of Shakespeare's sonnets known as the Dark Lady sequence. This forms part of a larger sequence of 154 sonnets published in 1609.
Most of the other poems in this sequence are addressed to a young man known as the "Fair Youth." The Dark Lady poems tend to be more anxious and of a more sexual nature than those addressed to this Fair Youth (though the latter certainly has some erotic moments!). The speaker of these sonnets—often taken to be Shakespeare himself—has a deeper and more loving attitude towards the young man, while the Dark Lady sonnets frequently display contempt and animosity (as can be seen in this poem's closing couplet). Scholars don't know much for sure about the identity of the Dark Lady, and theorize that she might be anyone from Queen Elizabeth to Shakespeare's wife Anne Hathaway—or entirely made up.
This sonnet itself is possibly inspired by Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, which similarly found its speaker "Sicke to the death, still loving my disease." Sidney's sonnet sequence, Astophel and Stella, was also a major influence on Shakespeare.
The sonnet (which translates as "little song") originated in Italy in the 1200s, though the 14th-century Italian poet, Petrarch, is seen as its greatest early innovator. Petrarch established the sonnet as a form of love poetry, and also began the long tradition of poetic skill being read as evidence of powerful romantic feeling. The sonnet was later popularized in the English language by writers like Sir Thomas Wyatt (who translated/interpreted a number of Petrarch's sonnets) and the aforementioned Sir Philip Sidney.
So-called Shakespearean (or English) sonnets differ from Petrarchan sonnets through their rhyme scheme and structure. Shakespearean sonnets end with a couplet that responds to what came before.
Historical Context
Shakespeare's sonnets were composed in the 1590s and early 1600s, and first published together in 1609. This means the sonnets were mostly written in the Elizabethan period, but published in the Jacobean (that is, when King James succeeded Queen Elizabeth).
The Elizabethan era is seen as an age of adventure and discovery, with British ships exploring the globe and the age of colonialism just on the horizon. It was a culturally rich time, too: Shakespeare was one of London's many celebrated poets and playwrights, making a name for himself through exciting linguistic innovation and psychologically complicated characters.
Even though the poem is almost entirely metaphorical, it's worth considering the dominant medical system of the 16th century. Elizabethans believed that people's health was governed by the four humors: black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm. A good balance between these four substances meant an individual was in good health—and, conversely, too much of one these humors resulted in a whole range of problems. While this poem doesn't mention any humors, it does reflect the general idea that having too much of one thing (here, desire) is dangerous.
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More “Sonnet 147: My love is as a fever, longing still” Resources
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External Resources
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The Poem Out Loud — A reading by one of England's finest actors, John Hurt.
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The First Edition of the Sonnets — See the sonnet in its original context: the 1609 Quarto edition.
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The Sonnet as a "Little Room" — Listen to a fascinating lecture by the late, great scholar Russ McDonald, which interprets the sonnets in their historical context.
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The Four Humors — More about the dominant medical system of the 16th century, and how Shakespeare used it in his work.
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Shakespeare's Sonnets — Find all the sonnets, plus some analysis, in one useful place!
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In Search of the Dark Lady — An article that investigates the identity of the speaker's lover.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by William Shakespeare
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