English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
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| 127. Ninety-eighth Sonnet |
| | | William Shakespeare (1564–1616) |
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| 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 everything, | |
| That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d with him. | |
| Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell | 5 |
| 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; | 10 |
| 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. | |
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