Sonnet XCVII

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!

And yet this time removed was summer's time,

The teeming autumn, big with rich in

crease,

Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime, Like widowed wombs after their lords' de

cease:

Yet this abundant issue seemed to me But 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, 't is with so dull a

cheer

That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near.

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 everything, That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him.

Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell

Of different flowers in odour 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,

Nor 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.

Sonnet CII

My love is strengthened, though more weak in seeming;

I love not less, though less the show appear:

That love is merchandized whose rich esteeming

The owner's tongue doth publish everywhere.

Our love was new and then but in the

spring

When I was wont to greet it with my

lays,

As Philomel in summer's front doth sing And stops her pipe in growth of riper days:

Not that the summer is less pleasant now Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,

But that wild music burthens every bough And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.

Therefore like her I sometime hold my tongue,

Because I would not dull you with my song.

To me, fair friend, you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I eyed,

Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold

Have from the forests shook three summers' pride,

Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned

In process of the seasons have I seen, Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,

Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are

green.

Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand, Steal from his figure and no pace perceived;

So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,

Hath motion and mine eye may be deceived:

For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred;

Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.

Sonnet CVI

When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have ex-
pressed

Even such a beauty as you master now.
So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
And, for they looked but with divining
eyes,

They had not skill enough your worth to sing:

For we, which now behold these present days,

Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

(B 325)

385

2 C