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Palas Athene
SONNET NO. 105
Let not my love be call'd idolatry,
Nor my beloved as an idol show,
Since all alike my songs and praises be,
To one, of one, still such and ever so.
Kind in my love today, tomorrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
Therefore my verse to constancy confined,
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
Fair, kind and true, is all my argument,
Fair, kind and true, varying to other words,
And in this change is my invention spent,
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
Fair, kind and true, have often lived alone,
Which three till now never kept seat in one.
Note the repetition of the following words, we find-fair kind
and true, fair kind and true, fair kind and true, one, one, one,
one, one, my love, my love.
This sonnet is addressed by Bacon to Pallas Athene the Greek
goddess of wisdom as a thank-offering for her help in enabling
Bacon to carry out his ideas of publishing his works for the
benefit of humanity. Bacon himself in his "Advancement of
Learning " refers to this where he wrote----" These three as in
the body so in the mind, seldom meet and commonly never-and
sometimes two of them meet but rarely all three."