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featuring complete collections of poems by the following poets:
Rudyard Kipling
Edgar Allan Poe
Robert Louis Stevenson
You are here: Home » British/American Poets » William Shakespeare » "Then Hate Me When Thou Wilt..."
"Then Hate Me When Thou Wilt..."
(From “Sonnets”, XC)
Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now;
Now while the world is bent my deeds to cross,
Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,
And do not drop in for and after-loss:
Ah! do not , when my heart hath scap’d this sorrow,
Come in the rearward of a conquer’d woe;
Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,
To linger out a purpos’d overthrow.
If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,
When other petty griefs have done their spite,
But in the onset come; so shall I taste
At first the very worst of fortune’s might;
And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,
Compar’d with loss of thee will not seem so.

