This is night in Venus and Adonis:
Look! the world’s comforter with
weary gait
His day’s hot task hath ended in
the West;
The owl, night’s herald, shrieks
’tis very late;
The sheep are gone to fold, birds to their
nest
And coal-black clouds, that shadow heaven’s
light,
Do summon us to part and bid good-night.
And this morning, in Romeo and Juliet:
The grey-ey’d morn smiles on the
frowning night,
Checkering the Eastern clouds with streaks
of light.
And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels
From forth day’s path and Titan’s
fiery wheels;
Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,
The day to cheer, and night’s dank
dew to dry ...
Such wealth and brilliance of personification was not found again until Goethe, Byron, and Shelley.
He is unusually rich in descriptive phrases:
The weary sun hath made a golden
set,
And by the bright track of his golden car
Gives token of a goodly day to-morrow.
The worshipp’d Sun
Peered forth the golden window of the East.
The all-cheering sun
Should in the farthest East begin to draw
The shady curtains from Aurora’s bed.
The moon:
Like to a silver bow
New bent in heaven.
Titania says:
I will wind thee in my arms....
So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle
Gently entwist; the female ivy so
Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.
O how I love thee!
That same dew, which sometime on the buds
Was wont to swell, like round and orient pearls,
Stood now within the pretty flow’rets’ eyes
Like tears.
(Midsummer Night’s Dream.)
Daffodils
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty.
(Winter’s Tale.)
Pale primroses
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength.
(Winter’s Tale.)
Goethe calls winds and waves lovers. In Troilus and Cressida we have:
The sea being smooth,
How many shallow bauble boats dare sail
Upon her patient breast, making their
way
With those of nobler bulk!
But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage
The gentle Thetis, and anon behold
The strong-ribb’d bark through liquid
mountains cut,
Bounding between two moist elements
Like Perseus’ horse.
And further on in the same scene:
What raging of the sea! shaking of earth! Commotion in the winds! ... the bounded waters Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores.
The personification of the river in Henry IV. is half mythical: