, revealing the most delicate relations between Nature
and the soul. Ibykos had pointed the contrast between the gay spring
time and his own unhappy heart in which Eros raged like 'the Thracian
blast.' Theocritus had painted the pretty shepherdess drawing all
Nature under the spell of her charms; Akontios (Kallimachos) had
declared that if trees felt the pangs and longings of love, they
would lose their leaves; all such ideas, modern in their way, had
been expressed in antiquity.

This is Shakespeare's treatment of them:

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 time,
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase ...
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,
(Sonnet 97.)

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
Of different flowers in odour and in hue
Could make me any summer's story tell....
Yet seem'd it winter still.... (Sonnet 98.)

Or compare again the cypresses in Theocritus sole witnesses of secret
love; or Walther's

One little birdie who never will tell,

with

These blue-veined violets whereon we lean
Never can blab, nor know not what we mean.
(_Venus and Adonis._)

Comparisons of ladies' lips to roses, and hands to lilies, are common
with the old poets. How much more modern is:

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 lily I condemned for thy hand,
And buds of marjoram had stolen thy hair;
The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
One blushing shame, another white despair....
More flowers I noted, yet I none could see
But sweet or colour it had stolen from thee.
(Sonnet 99.)

And how fine the personification in Sonnet 33:

Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with gold