- 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.