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 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.
This and the next two sonnets are interconnected, and describe a period of separation, perhaps one which has come to an end and may be looked back on, as a time removed from which the poet is glad to have escaped. A strong contrast runs throughout between presence and absence, summer and winter, pleasure and pain. Wherever the youth is, it is summer or fruitful autumn, wherever he is not, it is freezing winter. The rich imagery of the natural world somehow endows the youth with a supernatural beauty, and one begins to understand why he exercises such a fascination over all those who know him. To a certain extent therefore the poem is positive and serene, because, despite the negative imagery of winter, it holds out the hope of being part of summer’s pleasure, being with the youth, and being in the same place at last where all things beautiful live.
Sonnet XCVII
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