Sonnet 97: How Like A Winter Hath My Absence Been Poem by William Shakespeare

.shakespeares-sonnets.com/ This and the next two sonnets are interconnected, and describe a period of separation, perhaps one which has come to an end and may be looked back on, as a time removed from which the poet is glad to have escaped. A strong contrast runs throughout between presence and absence, summer and winter, pleasure and pain. Wherever the youth is, it is summer or fruitful autumn, wherever he is not, it is freezing winter. The rich imagery of the natural world somehow endows the youth with a supernatural beauty, and one begins to understand why he exercises such a fascination over all those who know him. To a certain extent therefore the poem is positive and serene, because, despite the negative imagery of winter, it holds out the hope of being part of summer's pleasure, being with the youth, and being in the same place at last where all things beautiful live. ...

... 7. Bearing the wanton burden of the prime, Bearing = carrying, as when pregnant. Giving birth. The two meanings overlap. the wanton burden = the burden of pregnancy caused by former wantonness and profligacy. the prime = the springtime. 8. Like widow'd wombs after their lords' decease: widowed wombs = wombs of women who have been widowed after they have conceived. after their lord's decease = after their husband's have died. In Shakespeare's time lord often was equivalent to husband, and it is still current in the phrase 'my lord and master'. (OED.4.) Cf.: Tell these head-strong women What duty they doe owe their lords and husbands. TS.V.2.131-2. Shakespeare also uses 'lord and master' in Lear: ...........Witness the world, that I create thee here My lord and master. KL.V.3.78-9. Nevertheless the use of the term here is suggestive of aristocratic widowhood, for which the mourning would be more sumptuous and extravagant than for an ordinary loss. The only other two occasions on which 'lord' is used in the sonnets are in contexts of aristocratic deference. Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage 26 They are the lords and owners of their faces, Others but stewards of their excellence.94

.. 9. Yet this abundant issue seemed to me abundant issue = plenteous and overflowing fruit, birth, production etc. The typical symbol of the autumn was the cornucopia, a horn overflowing with fruit and flowers and all the wealth of the harvest. 10. But hope of orphans, and unfathered fruit; orphans - a child who had lost only one parent was also called an orphan. unfathered = having lost a father. fruit = offspring. The double image of autumn's increase and the birth of children is blended into one. 11. For summer and his pleasures wait on thee, summer and his pleasures - summer is personified here, perhaps as a reveller, perhaps as a god of plenty, with courtiers (pleasures) and other maskers and revellers. The typical classical image was that of Bacchus and his attendant revellers. his = its. wait on thee = are your servants, wait for your commands, attend on you. With a suggestion also of 'wait for you to return', otherwise they cannot be merry and enjoy the bounteous summer. 12. And, thou away, the very birds are mute: thou away = you being away, you being absent. the very birds are mute = even the birds are silent. The reality is that birds do not sing much in the autumn, a fact mentioned in Sonnet 102 As Philomel in summer's front doth sing And stops her pipe in growth of riper days, but the poetic fiction here demands that the birds stop singing, or seem to stop singing, because the beloved youth is absent. 13. Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer, 'tis with so dull a cheer = they sing in such dull, drab and gloomy tones. Originally cheer meant face, then expression of the face. Hence disposition, frame of mind. (OED.1,2a.) . 14. That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near. leaves look pale - the leaves turn pale with fear, knowing that they must soon fall off and die. The suggestion is of a premature winter, which will strip the trees bare, and return to the bareness and barrenness of 'old December'. the winter's near = that the winter is near. Possibly 'the nearness of winter'.

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