How like a winter hath my absence been (Sonnet 97)

William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616

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 remov’d 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.