The Sonnets (Modern)
Not Peer Reviewed
1440
97
¶How like a winter hath my absence been
¶From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
¶What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen,
¶What old December's bareness everywhere!
1445And yet this time removed was summer's time,
¶The teeming autumn big with rich increase
¶Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
¶Like widowed wombs after their lords' decease:
¶Yet this abundant issue seemed to me
1450But hope of orphans, and unfathered fruit;
¶For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
¶And thou away, the very birds are mute;
¶_Or if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer
¶_That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near.
1455
98
¶From you have I been absent in the spring,
¶When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
¶Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
¶That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him.
1460Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
¶Of different flowers in odor and in hue,
¶Could make me any summer's story tell,
¶Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew;
¶Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
1465Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
¶They were but sweet, but figures of delight
¶Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
¶_Yet seemed it winter still, and, you away,
¶_As with your shadow I with these did play.
1470
99
¶The forward violet thus did I chide:
¶"Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,
¶If not from my love's breath? The purple pride
¶Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
1475In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed."
¶The lily I condemnèd for thy hand,
¶And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair;
¶The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
¶One blushing shame, another white despair;
1480A third, nor red, nor white, had stol'n of both,
¶And to his robbery had annexed thy breath;
¶But for his theft, in pride of all his growth
¶A vengeful canker ate him up to death.
¶_More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,
1485_But sweet, or color, it had stol'n from thee.