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 increase, Bearing the wanton burden of the prime, Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease: Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me But hope of orphans, and unfather’d 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. XCVIII From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April, dress’d in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing, That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d 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 seem’d it winter still, and you away, As with your shadow I with these did play. XCIX 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 In my love’s veins thou hast too grossly dy’d. The lily I condemned 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; A third, nor red nor white, had stol’n of both, And to his robbery had annex’d thy breath; But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth A vengeful canker eat him up to death. More flowers I noted, yet I none could see, But sweet, or colour it had stol’n from thee. C Where art thou Muse that thou forget’st so long, To speak of that which gives thee all thy might? Spend’st thou thy fury on some worthless song, Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light? Return forgetful Muse, and straight redeem, In gentle numbers time so idly spent; Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem And gives thy pen both skill and argument. Rise, resty Muse, my love’s sweet face survey, If Time have any wrinkle graven there; If any, be a satire to decay, And make time’s spoils despised every where. Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life, So thou prevent’st his scythe and crooked knife. CI