Shakespeare presents love and lust as two very different things. Although one is the perpetrator of the other and both are kin, lust is presented as love's darker cousin. The imagery used to depict love in Sonnet 116 shows how noble and altruistic the ideal of love is. Shakespeare presents it as unconditional in the line "it is an ever-fixed mark", and assures the reader that it does not "alter when it alteration finds". Shakespeare utilizes the natural imagery of the "tempest" to show that love is stronger than nature: it "looks on tempests and is never shaken".
             Lust on the other hand is not so worthy. Shakespeare depicts the act of love as "the expense of spirit in a waste of shame". This is again an example of natural imagery: the barren wasteland is like an arid desert. But even when uncommunicated, this lust is dangerous. Unconsummated lust is given much emotive language and is labeled "murderous, bloody... Savage, extreme, rude" and "cruel" in Sonnet 129. The idea of lust's more worthy mate love standing the test of time can not be further from the truth for lust. Where love is "not Time's fool", lust is whimsical: "Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream." Lust is only strong when it has not been spent, whereas love stands tall and true until the end of time – "(love) bears it out even to the edge of doom."
             Where love and lust are presented as ideals and in abstract terms, love is now presented in terms of a relationship between two people in Sonnet 138. Shakespeare is more disparaging of love in this sonnet, and his playful tone (particularly noticeable in the last two quatrains and the concluding couplet) deals with love without the dramatic tone of Sonnet 116. We are shown the folly in the behaviour of two people who are in love with the line, "I do believe her, though I know she lies." The fact that the speaker is admitting to being naive makes the reader question the grounding of his reasoning.
             ...