CXXIX

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 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 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.

Where this text comes from

First published in Shake-speares Sonnets (1609). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1] [2]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-12.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/william-shakespeare_poetry, sonnets.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (2)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1#L14.

Cite this poem

William Shakespeare (1564–1616). “CXXIX.” First published in Shake-speares Sonnets (1609). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/william-shakespeare/cxxix/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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