Winter’s coming…news from Shakespeare

Here comes the winter solstice....

You know how the music & words shape what we feel & say & do each day – it’s so cool when the poetry of our songs & verse says so clearly what is in our hearts & minds, whether it’s a cry of joy or singin’ the blues – that’s why it’s good to swap songs with each other. So, here’s one, as the winter solstice bears down on us…

How like a winter hath my absence been (Sonnet 97)
by William Shakespeare

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;
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.

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