Sonnet 97: How Like a Winter Hath My Absence Been
Sonnet 97: How Like a Winter Hath My Absence Been - form Summary
Sonnet Structure Frames Absence
This poem is a Shakespearean sonnet that uses the sonnet's three quatrains and closing couplet to map an emotional argument: successive quatrains develop the speaker's sense of winterlike absence by invoking seasons and barren imagery, then the turn reframes plentiful seasonality as hollow without the beloved. The final lines compress the complaint into a single image of muted birds and pale leaves, showing how form channels increasing intensity toward a concise emotional close.
Read Complete AnalysesHow 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 lords’ 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.
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