Desire in especial has inspired him with phrases
more magically expressive even than those gasped out by panting Sappho
when lust had made her body a lyre of deathless music. Her lyric to the
beloved is not so intense as Othello's:
"O, thou weed
Who art so lovely fair and smell'st so sweet
That the sense aches at thee";
or as Cleopatra's astonishing:
"There is gold, and here
My bluest veins to kiss";
--the revelation of a lifetime devoted to vanity and sensuality,
sensuality pampered as a god and adored with an Eastern devotion.
I do not think I need labour this point further; as I have already
noticed, Orsino, the Duke of "Twelfth Night," sums up Shakespeare's
philosophy of love in the words:
"Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die."--
Shakespeare told us the truth about himself when he wrote in sonnet 142,
"Love is my sin." We can expect from him new words or a new method in
the painting of passionate desire.
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