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  • Title: The Sonnets (Modern)
  • Editor: Michael Best

    • Copyright Internet Shakespeare Editions. This text may be freely used for educational, non-proift purposes; for all other uses contact the Coordinating Editor.
    Author: William Shakespeare
    Editor: Michael Best
    Not Peer Reviewed

    The Sonnets (Modern)

    144097
    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.
    145598
    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.
    147099
    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.
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