Many a time and oft Have you climbed up to walls and battlements, To tow'rs and windows, yea, to chimney tops, Your infants in your arms, and there have sat The livelong day, with patient expectation, To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome.

He hath borne himself beyond the promise of his age, doing in the figure of a lamb the feats of a lion. He hath indeed bettered expectation than you must expect of me to tell you how.

I am giddy; expectation whirls me round. Th' imaginary relish is so sweet That it enchants my sense.

Oft expectation fails, and most oft there Where most it promises; and oft it hits Where hope is coldest and despair most fits.

Promising is the very air o' th' time; it opens the eyes of expectation. Performance is ever duller for his act; and, but in the plainer and simpler kind of people, the deed of saying is quite out of use. To promise is most courtly and fashionable; performance is a kind of will or testament which argues a great sickness in his judgment that makes it.

Oft expectation fails, and most oft where most it promises; and oft it hits where hope is coldest; and despair most sits