Poetry Friday: Spring and Absence

Spring makes me happy. I haven't experienced it in ten years, and I had forgotten how wonderful it is.

Being away from my husband makes me sad. (In case you haven't been following along, he's in Haiti doing earthquake relief; the kids and I were evacuated from there right after the quake.) I miss him so much; his absence is a constant ache. It helps to find that others have had the same experience. I don't know that I'd say, as Shakespeare does of his love in the sonnet I've chosen for today, that he's the pattern for all the flowers (sorry, honey). I do know, though, that I can't enjoy that "spirit of youth in everything" the way I would if he were here.

Sonnet XCVIII
From you have I been absent in the spring

by William Shakespeare

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 seem’d it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.

Here's what I posted two years ago on Good Friday, and here's last year's Good Friday offering. Both are much more appropriate for the day than today's!

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.