Shakespeare Sonnet One Hundred Twenty Nine

This sonnet contains mainly a negative tone to it. The first twelve sentences in the sonnet are all one sentence phrases. Words like perjured, murd'rous, bloody, hated, hunted, rude, cruel, and blame are used to emphasize how negative the sonnet is in the beginning.

The first half of the poem focuses on how lust is cruel, and how awful it is to not experience love, but experiencing lust for a person. It is believed that this sonnet pertains to Shakespeare's "dark woman" mistress.

Toward the end of the third quatrain however, Shakespeare compares this lust much like joy proposed behind a dream. The couplet concludes this saying that this "heaven" that is lust much leads men to hell.

All in all, Shakespeare says that he knows lust is an awful feeling to have toward someone, but at the same time he cannot resist the lust, and he can accept it.