Idea 20: An evil spirit, your beauty, haunts

me still
BY MICHA EL DRA YT ON

An evil spirit, your beauty, haunts me still,

Wherewith, alas, I have been long possess'd,
Which ceaseth not to tempt me to each ill,
Nor gives me once but one poor minute's rest.
In me it speaks, whether I sleep or wake;
And when by means to drive it out I try,
With greater torments then it me doth take,
And tortures me in most extremity.
Before my face it lays down my despairs,
And hastes me on unto a sudden death;
Now tempting me to drown myself in tears,
And then in sighing to give up my breath.
Thus am I still provok'd to every evil
By this good-wicked spirit, sweet angel-devil.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44156/idea-20-an-evil-spirit-
your-beauty-haunts-me-still
Subject: Haunted beauty
Paraphrase: Your beauty haunts me all the time. The more I try to escape, the more
I get hurt. It makes me hopeful and hopeless at the same time.
However, you are still in my mind.
Occasion: Struggling of falling in love.
Organization: Sonnet, Shakespeare rhyme scheme; talking about love, yet not
worshipping it (unlike Petrarch)
Tone: Sorrowful, Hopeless, Despairing
Theme: Contrasting view about love and beauty
Title: Stating main idea of the poem and this is an idea
Speaker: Man in love
Shifts: At line 13-14(last two lines), despite the bad things mentioned earlier

Michael Drayton sorrowful poem, Idea 20: An evil spirit, your beauty, haunts me still
illustrates complication associated with two contrasting views of love. The author used
juxtaposition in order to emphasize two main contrasting ways to interpret beauty of the
loved one. As can be seen form the first line An evil spirit, your beauty, haunts me still, the
author describe beauty as an evil spirit which is contrasting to each other. Beauty of a
woman, especially the loved one, is powerful enough to penetrate a mans heart and is very
hard to get it out from ones mind. An evil spirit is being used in order to represent
something, in this case beauty, that is not welcomed and uncontrollable; hard to get rid of.
It is contrasting as usually people tend to refer beauty as an angel, yet in this case the author
sees beauty as an evil. By using this literary device, the author reveals not only the good side
of beauty- destroying peoples despair- but also the bad side of it too. It can be painful for the
one who is looking at it as it always in the viewers mind(haunted) where they cannot
overcome it.