Being apart from the person he loves feels exactly like winter to Shakespeare’s speaker—even though he’s actually living through summer and a teeming autumn. He feels bitter freezings, sees dark days, and finds a December bareness everywhere. The lush fertility that should be joyful seems hollow: autumn’s rich harvest becomes like a widow’s womb after her husband’s death, all that abundance orphaned and unfathered. Real pleasure, he realizes, doesn’t live in sunshine or ripening fruit but in the beloved’s company. Because summer’s joys wait entirely on that presence, the birds sing with such a lifeless, dreary note that leaves grow pale, terrified of the winter they sense coming. The whole mood is one of aching emptiness, where inner loss drains the outside world of color, warmth, and meaning.
Sonnet 97: How like a winter hath my absence been — Summary
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.