Survived finals week!!

I’m finally done with finals!!  And my first grade is in:  I got an A on Nonverbal  J  And here comes the week of grading finals …  But first, today’s sonnet:

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XCVIII

  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 every thing,

  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,

  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.

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The yet at the beginning of the second quatrain is already a turn.  The you, you in the last line of the third quatrain is another, bringing us back from the metaphors to the addressee of the sonnet.  Reapeated words—takrār-e lafzī—are a powerful tool, but a lot less common in English poetry than, say, in Persian or Urdu poetry—I’m thinking of Hāfiz:

barq-e ʼishq ar Khirman-e pashmīna pōshē sōKht sōKht

jaur-e shāh-e kāmrāN gar bar gadā’ē raft raft

or Ātish:

zamīn-e chaman gul khilātī hai kyā kyā

badaltā hai raNg āsmāN kaise kaisē

…  The main volta would still be the yet at the beginning of the closing couplet.  Now to drive to Ann Arbor and get my daughter for the weekend  J