| 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 remov’d was summer’s time; | 5 |
| 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; | 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. |