126. Ninety-seventh Sonnet

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 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.