1 How like a winter hath my absence been How like a winter hath my absence been
My being away from you has been exactly like a harsh winter Being away from you felt like going through a brutal winter being away from you
= winter
so cold and dark
2 From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
Away from you, who bring joy to every passing season And I lost all the happiness that you bring to the year no you = no joy
the year felt empty Wordplay: “pleasure of the fleeting year”
The beloved is summer—fleeting, seasonal, temporary. Love of something temporary is love of something always disappearing.
3 What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
I experienced such bitter chill, such bleak and gloomy days I went through so much cold heartache and depressing times freezing cold
dark days
feeling miserable
4 What old December’s bareness everywhere!
Everywhere I looked, everything was bare and dead like December Everything around me felt like late winter - empty and lifeless bare everywhere
everything dead
winter vibes
5 And yet this time removed was summer’s time, And yet this time removed was summer's time
Yet the actual season during my absence was summer But while I was gone, it was actually summer season but actually summer
while i was gone
6 The teeming autumn big with rich increase,
A summer teeming with life, heavy with abundant growth and fertility A season bursting with life, full of rich growth everywhere burst with life
heavy with growth
so fertile Wordplay: “teeming autumn / wanton burden of the prime”
Autumn is heavy with ripeness, but 'wanton' suggests uncontrolled fertility, burden rather than blessing without the beloved to receive it.
7 Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
Carrying the rich, luxuriant overflow of summer's peak season Heavy with all the wild, overflowing richness of summer's height wild overflow
summer at peak
too much abundance
8 Like widowed wombs after their lords’ decease:
Like the empty wombs of women whose husbands have died Like the empty bodies of women who have lost their husbands empty wombs
widows mourning
loss and emptiness
Volta Acknowledges that the calendar says abundance, but inverts it: the speaker's winter was their actual reality despite summer's external plenty.
9 Yet this abundant issue seemed to me
Yet all this abundant fruit and growth appeared to me But all that rich growth and fertility just seemed to me all that abundance
looked empty
to me
10 But hope of orphans, and unfathered fruit,
Like the miserable hope of orphans, and fruit without a father Just like the sad hope of children without parents, plants without care orphans' hope
fruit with no father
sad things
11 For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
Because summer and all its delights depend on you Because you're the reason summer brings any pleasure at all summer needs you
you make it good
without you it's nothing
12 And thou away, the very birds are mute.
And with you gone, even the birds stop singing And when you're away, even the birds go silent you gone
birds shut up
no more singing
13 Or if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer,
Or if they do sing, it's with such a joyless, depressed voice Or if they sing at all, it's in such a sad, lifeless way if they sing
it sounds so sad
no joy in it
14 That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.
So mournful that even the leaves turn pale, afraid of winter's approach So gloomy that the leaves themselves look pale and scared of winter leaves go pale
scared of winter
everything dying