English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
| |
| 135. One Hundred and Twenty-ninth Sonnet |
| | | William Shakespeare (1564–1616) |
| |
| |
| TH’ 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; | |
| A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe; | 10 |
| 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. | |
| |
|
|
|
