| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907. | | | | The Expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame | | By William Shakespeare (1564–1616) |
| | | THE EXPENSE of spirit in a waste of shame | |
| Is lust in action; and till action, lust | |
| Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, | |
| Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust, | |
| Enjoy’d no sooner but despisèd straight, | 5 |
| 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; | 10 |
| A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe; | |
| Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream. | |
| All this the world well knows; yet none knows well | |
| To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell. | | | | |
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