Sonnet 97 (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 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.

This is evidently a Shakespearean sonnet. It has 14 lines, with a rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, and is in iambic pentameter.
The sonnet is about the speaker's yearning for the beloved, whose absence is compared to the desolation of winter. This comparison is exclaimed in the first quatrain. In the second, the speaker claims that the season was actually summer or autumn, when the summer's blooming was reaping fruit. In the third, the bounty of the summer is dismissed as unreal, for "summer and his pleasures" wait on the arrival of the beloved. When the lover is gone, even the birds sing with "so dull a cheer".
My theme, "Seasons", is very prominent in this poem. In fact, summer, autumn, and winter are all mentioned. Seasons and their typical characteristics are often used to portray relationships, as they are here.
In Line #1, "like a winter" is a simile.
Lines #11 and 14, personification is used on summer and leaves.