Sonnet 40

Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all,

What hast thou then more then thou hadst before?

No love, my love, that thou maist true love call,

All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more:

Then if for my love, thou my love receivest,

I cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest,

But yet be blam'd, if thou this selfe deceivest

By wilful taste of what thy selfe refusest.

I doe forgive thy robb'rie gentle theefe

Although thou steale thee all my poverty:

And yet love knowes it is a greater griefe

To beare loves wrong, then hates knowne injury.

Lascivious grace, in whom all il wel showes,

Kill me with spights yet we must not be foes.

Commentary

Address to a beloved young man

In the first quatrain, the poet encourages the young man to take all but, as he already has all, this cannot amount to any more.

In the second quatrain, the poet observes that he cannot blame the youth for taking and using his (the poet's) love, but he can blame him if he takes this love and then grants what he will not grant to the poet to somebody else.

In the third quatrain, the poet lets it be known that it is worse to love and not know than to know (an injury) and hate.

In the final couplet, the poet tries to resolve these contradictions in a neat, rhyming couplet. And what is the outcome? This lustful young man full of grace, whose ill nature only ever shows well, may well kill him (the poet) with bad deeds (spights), but still they should remain friends.

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