"From thee have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
That heavy Saturn leaped and laughed with him."
But as dramatic poet, Shakespeare goes even beyond this, entering so
perfectly into the consciousness of the characters he himself has
created, that he sees everything through their peculiar mood, and makes
every epithet, as if unconsciously, echo and re-echo it. Theseus asks
Hermia,--
"Can you endure the livery of a nun,
For aye to be in shady cloister mewed,
To live a _barren_ sister all your life,
Chanting faint hymns to the _cold fruitless_ moon?"
When Romeo must leave Juliet, the private pang of the lovers becomes a
property of Nature herself, and
"_Envious_ streaks
Do lace the _severing_ clouds in yonder east."