Personal Statement
Sonnet 97 fascinates me because of Shakespeare's creative use of wintery imagery to explain the separation of two lovers. While many are compelled to focus on the fruitful gifts of summer, the narrator remains disheartened over the disunion between himself and his lover. He expresses this dejection through imagery of the winter season. The world seems bleak and meaningless after his separation from his beloved; the once-cheerful birds rarely sing, and the once vibrant leaves now look pale and vapid. The speaker's poignant reflection on how the absence of his lover created a blizzard of hopelessness within him prompted me to contemplate the heart wrenching emotion of homesickness. My homesickness has influenced my outlook on the world, as my surroundings sometimes seem bleaker and duller than reality.
Sonnet
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 widowed wombs after their lord’s decease.
Yet this abundant issue seemed to me
But hope of orphans and unfathered 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.
Sonnet Video
Sonnet Analysis
The Harrowing Effect of Loneliness in the First Quatrain of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 97
In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 97 the first quatrain is loaded with various types of wintry imagery, emphasizing how the speaker’s separation from his beloved has affected his perception of the environment around him. Within the first line, the speaker laments about how the isolation from his beloved feels “like a winter.” Winter, the harshest season, metaphorically illustrates how unbearable and unfruitful the speaker’s absence is. Without his beloved, the physical and emotional state of the speaker remains dejected and dreary. Similar to the discomfort of the winter season, the absence of companionship opens the speaker’s eyes to a dark, lonely world, leading to his emotional discomfort (line 2). As the year goes by, the speaker becomes reminiscent about the shared memories between him and his beloved. When they were together, time, packed with endearing moments, moved too quickly. Those happy days seem so pleasurable yet unimaginably far from where the speaker’s current frame of mind resides. Images of an “old December’s bareness” (line 4) reflect the speaker’s dejected state of mind, which his sorrowful lamentations of being alone during a time of love, laughter, and happiness stem from. Through the disconsolate tone of the speaker and the imagery of an unbearable environment in which no jubilance nor growth can be found within anyone, the beloved’s absence makes summertime seem like winter. Throughout the rest of the sonnet, themes of loneliness and winter continue to obstruct the speaker’s view from seeing his surroundings for what they truly are.