The expense of spirit in a waste of shame  

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame              A   
Is lust in action: and till action, lust                         B
Is perjur'd, murderous, bloody, full of blame,         A
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;            B

Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight;              C
Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,              D
Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait,               C
On purpose laid to make the taker mad:              D

Mad in pursuit and in possession so;                   E
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;       F
A bliss in proof,— and prov'd, a very woe;          E
Before, a joy propos'd; behind a dream.             F

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well       G
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.           G

This sonnet follows the rules of the Elizabethan sonnet: it is composed by three quatrains and a rhyming couplet. The title makes me understand it belongs to a collection because it is part of the first line of the poem. This is the sonnet 129 by william Shakespeare.  The rhyme scheme is ABAB , CDCD ,EFEF , GG .The interlocking rhymes that propel the reader from one quatrain to the next only serve to reinforce the final couplet (where the rhymes finally meet line to line). In the second and third quatrain rhymes are not perfect “so-woe…” but they convey the same sound.

Sonnet 129 deals with the issue of lust and human promiscuity and explores the reaction of the human psyche to the promptings of sexual urges.Shakespeare explains his biting criticism of lust through fourteen lines of contemplation. Shakespeare abandons his characteristic use of ambiguity in favor of unequivocal words of condemnation, as we see in his description of lust before action in lines 2-4.  Lust in action is wasteful, shameful expenditure of energy  and it is dishonest, murderous, bloody, full of blame, savage, extreme, crude, cruel, and not to be trusted.

This long series of adjectives create a negative climax. The atmosphere that is created by the use of these words recall a Medieval vision of sex. In the second quatrain Shakespeare describes feelings. Lust is a strong passion that man is not able to control;humans hunt sex like a prey but when the blissful moment arrives , they immediatly regret this moment. It hasn’t value anymore.

In the third quatrain the speaker says that lust is mad in all three of its forms: in pursuit, possession and in memory.

While it is experienced it might be “a bliss in proof,” but as soon as it is finished (“proved”) it becomes “a very woe”; in memory, the pleasure is merely “a dream.”

In the couplet, the speaker says that the whole world knows these things well; but nevertheless, none knows how to shun lust in order to avoid shame: “To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.”

We can notice that this final line has a contrast : heaven vs hell and that recall the Medieval vision according to which there was the never-ending battle between good and evil .