Sonnet 129: The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
First published in Shake-speares Sonnets (London: Thomas Thorpe, 1609); text from Shakespeare’s Sonnets, ed. William J. Rolfe (Harper & Brothers, 1883).
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action: and till action, lust
Is perjur’d, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight,
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
Past reason hated, as a swallow’d bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
Mad in pursuit and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof,— and prov’d, a very woe;
Before, a joy propos’d; behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.