William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907. How Like a Winter Hath My Absence Been By William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
HOW 1 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 removed 2 was summer’s time; 5 The teeming Autumn, big with rich increase. Bearing the wanton burden of the prime 3 Like widow’d wombs after their Lord’s decease: Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me But hope of orphans 4 and unfather’d fruit; 10 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.
Note 1. How like a winter hath my absence been. Sonnet xcvii. in Shake-speare’s Sonnettes, 1609. [back ]Note 2. This time removed: this time of absence. [back ]Note 3. Prime: Spring. [back ]Note 4. Hope of orphans: such hope as orphans bring; or, expectation of the birth of children whose father is dead. (Staunton.) Dowden proposes crop of orphans. [back ]
