
Epistle to Muhammad Sháh
Source: A Midsummer Night's Dream
Epistle to Muhammad Sháh
“Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd.”
Act III, scene viii; often paraphrased: "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned". A similar line occurs in Love's Last Shift, by Colley Cibber, act iv.: "We shall find no fiend in hell can match the fury of a disappointed woman".
The Mourning Bride (1697)
Variant: Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.
Context: Vile and ingrate! too late thou shalt repent
The base Injustice thou hast done my Love:
Yes, thou shalt know, spite of thy past Distress,
And all those Ills which thou so long hast mourn'd;
Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd.
The Clod and the Pebble, st. 1
1790s, Songs of Experience (1794)
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 280.
Epistle to Muhammad Sháh
“O learn to read what silent love hath writ: To hear with eyes belongs to love´s fine wit.”
Source: Sonnet XXIII
Context: As an unperfect actor on the stage,
Who with his fear is put besides his part,
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength’s abundance weakens his own heart;
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love’s right,
And in mine own love’s strength seem to decay,
O’ercharged with burthen of mine own love’s might.
O, let my books be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast;
Who plead for love, and look for recompense,
More than that tongue that more hath more express’d.
O, learn to read what silent love hath writ:
To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.
“O Heaven! he cried, my bleeding country save!”
Part I, line 359
Pleasures of Hope (1799)
“I love him to hell and back and heaven and back, and have and do and will.”