Today on his birthday, here is one of Shakespeare's haunting sonnets.

Love and mortality, often interwoven, are leitmotifs of the 154. Love dominates this one with its springtime imagery.

SONNET 98

From you I have 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 not 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.