"How Like A Winter Hath My Absence Been"

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.

And yet this time remov'd was summer's time,

the teeming autumn, big with rich increase,

Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,

Like widowed wombs after their lords' decease;

Yet this abundant issue seem'd to me

But hope of orphans and unfathered fruit;

for summer and his pleasures wait on thee,

And, thou away, the very birds mute;

Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer,

That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near.

Sonnet XCVII

William Shakespeare