WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

��162. xviti

T ET me not to the marriage of true minds

• ^ Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove :

O, no ! it is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests and is never snaken ;

It is the star to every wand'ring bark,

Whose worth 's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love 's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom :

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

��16$. xix

r^H* 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.

�� �