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The Winter’s Tale

Dean alters the Shakespearean quotation to describe Emily as they go to the Disappointed House:

There is a little mossy hollow behind those young firs that is full of violets in May–violets,

Sweeter than lids of Emily’s eyes
Or Emily’s breath.

Emily’s a nicer name than Cytherea or Juno, I think.

-Emily’s Quest ch.9

Eric, the new schoolmaster of Lindsay, explores his new surroundings on Prince Edward Island

When he did not go to the shore he liked to indulge in long tramps through the Lindsay fields and woods, in the mellowness of “the sweet ‘o the year.”

-Kilmeny of the Orchard ch.5

The Winter’s Tale
By William Shakespeare

(excerpt from‘ Act 3, Scene 4)

PERDITA

Out, alas!
You’d be so lean, that blasts of January
Would blow you through and through.
Now, my fair’st friend,
I would I had some flowers o’ the spring that might
Become your time of day; and yours, and yours,
That wear upon your virgin branches yet
Your maidenheads growing: O Proserpina,
For the flowers now, that frighted thou let’st fall
From Dis’s waggon! daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes
Or Cytherea’s breath; pale primroses
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bight Phoebus in his strength — a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one! O, these I lack,
To make you garlands of, and my sweet friend,
To strew him o’er and o’er!

(excerpt from‘ Act 4, Scene 3, lines 1-4)

When daffodils begin to peer,
With heigh! the doxy over the dale,
Why, then comes in the sweet o’ the year;
For the red blood reigns in the winter’s pale.

The complete epic poem can be read online at University of Virginia Etext Center