en face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to West with this disgrace:
Even so my sun one early morn did shine
With all triumphant splendour on my brow;
But out, alack! he was but one hour mine;
The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now.
Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth.

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.