FOUR SEASONS and some SHAKESPEARE.

THE FOUR SEASONS:

To me, fair friend, you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I eyed,Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold Have from the forests shook three summers' pride,Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd In process of the seasons have I seen, Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd,Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.(Sonnet 104) 

It was a lover and his lass, With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,That o’er the green corn-field did pass,In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;Sweet lovers love the spring.(As You Like It, 5.3.15-20)

SUMMER

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, 

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade 

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest: 

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, 

So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

(Sonnet 18) 

AUTUMN

The childing autumn, angry winter, changeTheir wonted liveries, and the mazed world,By their increase, now knows not which is which.(A Midsummer Night's Dream, 2.1.116-118) 

The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,

Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,Like widow'd wombs after their lords' decease.(Sonnet 97, 6-8) 

WINTER

Thou knowest, winter tames man, woman, and beast.

(The Taming of the Shrew, 4.1.10)

When icicles hang by the wall
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail
And Tom bears logs into the hall 
And milk comes frozen home in pail, 
When blood is nipp'd and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl, 
Tu-whit; 
Tu-who, a merry note, 
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
When all aloud the wind doth blow 
And coughing drowns the parson's saw 
And birds sit brooding in the snow 
And Marian's nose looks red and raw, 
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, 
Then nightly sings the staring owl, 
Tu-whit; 
Tu-who, a merry note, 
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
(Love's Labour's Lost, 5.2.916-31)

FORTY and COUNTING!

For this be the fortieth year of my reign. Thus I bring to thee words of inspiration from mine favorite quiller.

Anne Hathaway's House in Stratford Upon Avon.

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, 

And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,

Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now, 

Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held: 

Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies, 

Where all the treasure of thy lusty days, 

To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes, 

Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.

How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use, 

If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine 

Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,' 

Proving his beauty by succession thine! 

    This were to be new made when thou art old, 

    And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

-William Shakespeare.

This sonnet was written in praise of a friend of Will's and as encouragement to the friend to procreate. The only way to live forever, Will believed.