ily rejoices:

Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou hadst yesterday.

Well might Othello exclaim that he is "Set on the rack." Each new
suspicion is a fresh pull of the lever, a tightening of the strain
to breaking point, and soon his jealousy turns to the fierce and
murderous anger Iago hoped it would:

Like to the Pontic sea,
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
To the Propontic and the Hellespont,
Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,
Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love,
Till that a capable and wide revenge
Swallow them up.

Thus was he urged on, worried by his jealousy, until, in his bloody
rage, he slew his faithful wife. Poor Desdemona, we weep her fate, yet
at the same time we should deeply lament that Othello was so beguiled
and seduced by his jealousy to so horrible a deed. And few men or
women there are, unless their souls are purified by the wisdom of God,
that are not liable to jealous influences. Our human nature is weak
and full of subtle treacheries, that, like Iago, seduce us to our own
undoing. He who yields for one moment to the worries of jealousy
is already on the downward path that leads to misery, woe and deep
undoing, Iago is made to declare the philosophy of this fact, when, in
the early portion of the play he says to Roderigo:

'Tis in ourselves we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our
gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners; so that if
we will plant nettles or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up
thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs or distract it with
many, either to have it sterile with idleness or manured with
industry, why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies
in our wills.

Therein, surely, is great truth. We can plant or weed up, in the
garden of our minds, whatever we will; we can "have it sterile
with idleness," or fertilize it with industry, and it must ever be
remembered that the more fertile the soil the more evil weeds will
grow apace if we water and tend them. Our jealous worries are the
poisonous weeds of life's garden and should be rooted out instanter,
and kept out, until not a sign of them can again be found.

Solomon sang that "jealousy is as cruel as the grave; the coals
thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement