How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December's bareness everywhere.
Sonnet XCVII. SHAKESPEARE.
Days of absence, sad and dreary,
Clothed in sorrow's dark array,—
Days of absence, I am weary;
She I love is far away.
Days of Absence, J.J. ROUSSEAU.
Love reckons hours for months, and days for years;
And every little absence is an age.
Amphictrion. J. DRYDEN.
What! keep a week away? Seven days and nights?
Eightscore eight hours? And lovers' absent hours
More tedious than the dial eightscore times?
O, weary reckoning!
Othello. Act iii. Sc. 4. SHAKESPEARE.
Long did his wife,
Suckling her babe, her only one, look out
The way he went at parting,—but he came not!
Italy. S. ROGERS.
With what a deep devotedness of woe
I wept thy absence—o'er and o'er again
Thinking of thee, still thee, till thought grew pain,
And memory, like a drop that, night and day
Falls cold and ceaseless, wore my heart away!
Lalla Rookh: Veiled Prophet of Khorassan. T. MOORE.
Condemned whole years in absence to deplore,
And image charms he must behold no more.
Eloise to Abélard. A. POPE.
ACTION.
The flighty purpose never is o'ertook,
Unless the deed go with it.
Macbeth, Act. iv. Sc. 1. SHAKESPEARE.
If our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 't were all alike
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touched,
But to fine issues; nor Nature never lends
The smallest scruple of her excellence.
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor—
Both thanks and use.
Measure for Measure, Act i. Sc. 1. SHAKESPEARE.