Shakespeare's Sonnets Navigator Summary of Sonnet 97 in the Table of Contents Notes for Sonnet 97

Shakespeare's Sonnet 97


  1    How like a winter hath my absence been
  2    From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
  3    What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
  4    What old December's bareness every where!
  5    And yet this time removed was summer's time,
  6    The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
  7    Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
  8    Like widow'd wombs after their lords' decease:
  9    Yet this abundant issue seem'd to me
 10    But hope of orphans and unfather'd fruit;
 11    For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
 12    And, thou away, the very birds are mute;
 13      Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer
 14      That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near.

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