Sonnet 147 claims that the speaker’s love is a fever he keeps feeding, that his reason has abandoned him as a hopeless case, and that the proof of his madness is that he once called a dark and false woman fair.
Sonnet 147: Full Poem
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.
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 expressed.
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
Text from the 1609 Quarto, with spelling and punctuation lightly modernized.
At a Glance
Here are the key facts about Sonnet 147 for quick reference.
What Sonnet 147 Means
Sonnet 147 describes love as an illness, follows it from its first symptoms to delirium, and ends by naming its cause.
The first quatrain gives the symptoms. The speaker’s love is like a fever that craves the very thing that keeps it going. It feeds on what prolongs the illness, trying to satisfy an appetite that is sick and unpredictable.
The second quatrain introduces the doctor. Reason has been treating the speaker’s love, but the patient has ignored every prescription, so reason has left in anger. Now, in despair, the speaker learns from experience what medicine warned him: desire is death.
The third quatrain describes the patient without a doctor. He is beyond cure, now that reason no longer cares for him. He is frantic and restless, and his thoughts and words are like a madman’s, wandering aimlessly away from the truth.
The couplet names the symptom that proves his madness. He swore the woman was fair and bright, when in fact she is as black as hell and as dark as night.
Sonnet 147 Line by Line
Each line, with the sense of it in plain English.
Themes
Sonnet 147 treats love as a clinical case, and its themes follow the course of the illness.
Love as Disease
The speaker does not say that love feels like a fever; he says his love is one. It craves what makes it worse and feeds what keeps it alive. This is desire at its most destructive: a hunger that grows by being satisfied, so that every attempt to relieve it deepens the illness.
Reason Against Desire
Reason appears as a doctor who gives sensible orders and walks out when they are ignored. The speaker knows what he should do, and he knows that “desire is death.” Knowing does not help. The poem shows reason losing not because it is wrong, but because the patient refuses to listen.
Madness and Self-Deception
The final symptom is a disorder of perception. The speaker has “sworn” the woman fair and “thought” her bright. His madness shows not in wild behavior but in praise: he has called darkness light. The poem treats false love as a failure to see and speak the truth.
Form and Language
Sonnet 147 is built as a medical case, and nearly every line borrows the vocabulary of illness.
Meter and Rhyme
The poem is a Shakespearean sonnet in iambic pentameter, rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Each quatrain is a stage of the illness: symptoms, the doctor’s departure, and delirium. The couplet breaks the pattern by turning, for the first time, to speak directly to the woman.
The Language of Medicine
The medical words are everywhere: “fever,” “nurseth,” “disease,” “ill,” “sickly appetite,” “physician,” “prescriptions,” “physic,” and “cure.” The speaker also defies a piece of common medical advice of his time, that a fever should be starved rather than fed. He does the opposite, “feeding on that which doth preserve the ill.” Our guide to literary devices in the sonnets covers extended metaphors like this one.
Reason as a Doctor
The second quatrain personifies reason as a physician with a temper. He writes “prescriptions,” grows “angry” when they are ignored, and leaves. The personification turns an inner struggle into a scene between two characters, one of whom gives up.
Wordplay
“Longing” in line 1 is echoed by “longer” in line 2, so the craving itself seems to stretch the illness out. Line 9 plays on a proverb: normally, what is past cure should be past care, no longer worth worrying about. Here the speaker is “past cure” because reason is “past care,” no longer caring for him at all. The couplet ends on paired opposites: “fair” against “black,” and “bright” against “dark.”
A Closer Reading
Sonnet 147 claims to be the speech of a madman, but its last two lines are the sanest thing in it.
Line 12 tells us that the speaker’s thoughts and words are “at random from the truth vainly expressed.” Then comes the couplet, introduced with “For,” as if it were the evidence: “For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright.” The madness, it turns out, is not anything he is saying now. It is what he said before. His praise of the woman was the raving, the untruth spoken at random.
That makes the final line strange. “Who art as black as hell, as dark as night” is not delirium. It is the truth the speaker says he has lost the ability to tell. In the moment of diagnosing his own madness, he speaks with complete clarity, and he speaks directly to her for the first time, as “thee.” The poem’s most lucid words are also its cruelest.
Yet seeing the truth does not cure him. Nothing in the couplet suggests the fever has broken. He knows she is dark, just as he knows that “desire is death,” and the knowledge changes nothing. The poem reverses the advice of the sonnet just before it: Sonnet 146 tells the soul to starve the body’s appetites, while Sonnet 147 describes a lover who goes on feeding them, with his eyes open. The same painful clarity runs through Sonnet 138, where the speaker believes the woman “though I know she lies.”
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about Sonnet 147, answered briefly.
What Is Sonnet 147 About?
Love as a sickness. The speaker describes his desire for the woman of the Dark Lady sonnets as a fever he cannot stop feeding, and admits that it has driven him mad.
What Does “My Love Is as a Fever” Mean?
The speaker’s love behaves like a disease. It craves the very thing that keeps it going, so every attempt to satisfy it makes it worse.
What Does “Desire Is Death, Which Physic Did Except” Mean?
Desire is fatal, which is why medicine forbade it. “Physic” means medicine, and “except” means to object to or rule out.
Who Is Addressed in Sonnet 147?
The Dark Lady, but only in the couplet. For twelve lines the speaker describes his condition, then turns to her directly: “I have sworn thee fair.”
Why Does Sonnet 147 End With “Black as Hell”?
The line reveals what the speaker’s madness was: calling a false woman fair. “Black as hell” and “dark as night” describe her character as well as her looks.
Related Sonnets
Three Dark Lady sonnets about desire, madness, and seeing the truth.