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SONNET 97How like a winter hath my absence beenFrom 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 remov'd was summer's time, The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, Bearing the wanton burden of the prime, Like widow'd wombs after their lord's 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. NOTES XCVII. In this Sonnet, which evidently commences a new group, the poet states that he has been away from his friend during the summer and autumn, seasons which had seemed to him cheerless as winter. The Sonnet was written apparently either in the autumn or at the beginning of winter, but probably the former (see lines 13, 14). 2. From thee, "who art to me the pleasure," &c. 4. Old December's bareness. Cf. v. 8. 6, 8. The teeming autumn, &c. Autumn pregnant with the fruits prepared by summer, a season now passed away. 9, 10. Like the hope of leaving posthumous offspring. How to cite this article:______ Even More...  Stratford School Days: What Did Shakespeare Read? Games in Shakespeare's England [A-L] Games in Shakespeare's England [M-Z] An Elizabethan Christmas Clothing in Elizabethan England Queen Elizabeth: Shakespeare's Patron King James I of England: Shakespeare's Patron The Earl of Southampton: Shakespeare's Patron Going to a Play in Elizabethan London Ben Jonson and the Decline of the Drama Religion in Shakespeare's England Alchemy and Astrology in Shakespeare's Day Entertainment in Elizabethan England London's First Public Playhouse Shakespeare Hits the Big Time
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The famous poet William Wordsworth wrote that "the appropriate business of Poetry, (which, nevertheless, if genuine, is as permanent as pure science), her privilege and duty, is to treat of things not as they are, but as they appear; not as they exist in themselves, but as they seem to exist to the senses, and to the passions." According to Wordsworth, Sonnet 33, for its "merits of thought and language" is one of Shakespeare's greatest poems.
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