This fall has offered a small reprieve from the hard work we put in over the summer, but at the same time, it is starting to feel too long since we were out in the park, speaking Shakespeare’s glorious words to the summer sky.  And we still have the long winter to survive before we can be out there again!  A perfect melancholy sonnet comes to mind…

Sonnet 97

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 every where!
And yet this time removed was summer’s time,
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:
Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me
But hope of orphans and unfather’d fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute;
   Or, if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer
   That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.

But do not despair, dear readers and Shakespeare lovers.  There is much to look forward to…