Cold afternoon

It’s hard to believe how brutally cold it is  :(  This afternoon’s sonnet:

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CXXI

  'Tis better to be vile than vile esteem'd,

  When not to be receives reproach of being;

  And the just pleasure lost, which is so deem'd

  Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing:

  For why should others' false adulterate eyes

  Give salutation to my sportive blood?

  Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,

  Which in their wills count bad what I think good?

  No, I am that I am, and they that level

  At my abuses reckon up their own:

  I may be straight though they themselves be bevel;

  By their rank thoughts, my deeds must not be shown;

    Unless this general evil they maintain,

    All men are bad and in their badness reign.

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The volta’s pretty clear again—the unless in the Shakespearean position—and the point of the poem is condensed (verdichtet) into the final line.  More tomorrow (when it’s supposed to get even colder)—