LiederNet logo

CONTENTS

×
  • Home | Introduction
  • Composers (20,158)
  • Text Authors (19,574)
  • Go to a Random Text
  • What’s New
  • A Small Tour
  • FAQ & Links
  • Donors
  • DONATE

UTILITIES

  • Search Everything
  • Search by Surname
  • Search by Title or First Line
  • Search by Year
  • Search by Collection

CREDITS

  • Emily Ezust
  • Contributors (1,115)
  • Contact Information
  • Bibliography

  • Copyright Statement
  • Privacy Policy

Follow us on Facebook

×

Attention! Some of this material is not in the public domain.

It is illegal to copy and distribute our copyright-protected material without permission. It is also illegal to reprint copyright texts or translations without the name of the author or translator.

To inquire about permissions and rates, contact Emily Ezust at licenses@email.lieder.example.net

If you wish to reprint translations, please make sure you include the names of the translators in your email. They are below each translation.

Note: You must use the copyright symbol © when you reprint copyright-protected material.

by William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
Translation © by Ferdinando Albeggiani

How like a winter hath my absence been
Language: English 
Our translations:  ITA
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 remov'd was summer's time,
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burthen 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.

About the headline (FAQ)

Text Authorship:

  • by William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), no title, appears in Sonnets, no. 97 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

  • by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895 - 1968), "Sonnet XCVII - How like the winter", op. 125 (Shakespeare Sonnets), Heft 1 no. 15 (1944-7) [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
  • by Roxanna Panufnik (b. 1968), "How like a Winter", 2016, first performed 2016 [ soprano, cello and piano ], from Summer to Winter, no. 2 [sung text not yet checked]
  • by Roxanna Panufnik (b. 1968), "Winter's Near", 2008, first performed 2008 [ tenor, french horn and piano ], from The Generation of Love, Peters Edition [sung text not yet checked]
  • by Richard Simpson (1820 - 1876), "Sonnet XCVII", 1864-5 [ medium voice or high voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
  • by Ludmilla Ulehla (b. 1923), "How like a winter hath my absence been" [sung text checked 1 time]
  • by Elizabeth Walton Vercoe (b. 1941), "How like a winter", 1994 [ mezzo-soprano and piano ], from Varieties of Amorous Experience, no. 3, confirmed with composer's website [sung text checked 1 time]

Settings in other languages, adaptations, or excerpts:

  • Also set in Polish (Polski), a translation by Maciej Słomczyński (1922 - 1998) ; composed by Tadeusz Baird.
    • Go to the text. [Note: the text is not in the database yet.]

Other available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

  • FRE French (Français) (François-Victor Hugo) , no title, appears in Sonnets de Shakespeare, no. 97, first published 1857
  • ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , "E' stata la mia assenza simile a freddo inverno", copyright © 2007, (re)printed on this website with kind permission


Researcher for this page: Barbara Miller

This text was added to the website: 2005-08-06
Line count: 14
Word count: 107

E' stata la mia assenza simile a freddo inverno
Language: Italian (Italiano)  after the English 
E' stata la mia assenza simile a freddo inverno,
La mia assenza da te, gioia dell’anno che muore!
Freddo ho sentito, e ho visto oscuro il giorno,
E di Dicembre, attorno, lo squallore!
Eppure quei giorni d’assenza erano tempo estivo,
E già l’Autunno fecondo il suo frutto copioso,
che della primavera è il fardello lascivo,
portava nel grembo ormai vedovo dell’amato sposo:
Ma quella ricca progenie a me appariva,
solo promessa di orfani, senza padre frutti,
poiché la gioiosa estate te sola accompagnava,
e, te lontana, stanno anche gli uccelli zitti.
O se pur cantano, è con sì triste suono
Che scolora il fogliame, temendo l’inverno vicino.

Text Authorship:

  • Translation from English to Italian (Italiano) copyright © 2007 by Ferdinando Albeggiani, (re)printed on this website with kind permission. To reprint and distribute this author's work for concert programs, CD booklets, etc., you may ask the copyright-holder(s) directly or ask us; we are authorized to grant permission on their behalf. Please provide the translator's name when contacting us.
    Contact: licenses@email.lieder.example.net

Based on:

  • a text in English by William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), no title, appears in Sonnets, no. 97
    • Go to the text page.

 

This text was added to the website: 2007-01-16
Line count: 14
Word count: 107

Gentle Reminder

This website began in 1995 as a personal project by Emily Ezust, who has been working on it full-time without a salary since 2008. Our research has never had any government or institutional funding, so if you found the information here useful, please consider making a donation. Your help is greatly appreciated!
–Emily Ezust, Founder

Donate

We use cookies for internal analytics and to earn much-needed advertising revenue. (Did you know you can help support us by turning off ad-blockers?) To learn more, see our Privacy Policy. To learn how to opt out of cookies, please visit this site.

I acknowledge the use of cookies

Contact
Copyright
Privacy

Copyright © 2025 The LiederNet Archive

Site redesign by Shawn Thuris