they recall the embodied pleasures that seem, by con-
trast, to make time go by so quickly. Early on, Sonnet
97 marks this temporal problem in its sound effects by
juxtaposing the lengthy e sounds—associated with the
aristocrat—of “thee,” “fl eeting,” and “seen,” with the
alliterative d sounds—associated with the poet—of
“dark,” “days,” and “December’s.” To emphasize how
“old December’s bareness” is “everywhere” (l. 4) per-
ceived as painful, each of the sentences in the fi rst QUA-
TRAIN ends with an exclamation mark.
That use of hyperbole prepares us for its qualifi ca-
tion. As the second quatrain begins, readers learn that
the true time of year is just before the harvest. The
unexpected shift in season pits the poet’s imaginary
winter against the world as it exists. Here the world
wins out, for the poet now looks beyond his emotions
to the abundance of fall. Within two lines, he refers to
its fertility six times; three of these references occur in
his observation that the fi elds are “big with rich
increase” (l. 6). Autumn is here personifi ed as a preg-
nant woman.
Sonnet 97 insists that spring and summer are
responsible for autumn’s abundance. What is now
“teeming” thus derives from the “wanton” past—spe-
cifi cally, from the fathering effects of spring. That
abundance is a condition of possibility, a harvest yet to
come. The poet sees these seasons immediately, but
readers must struggle to comprehend this compressed,
multiseasonal temporality. Complicating matters, the
second quatrain then ends with the unsettling asser-
tion that growth is informed by death, since what the
poet sees of the earth reminds him of “widowed wombs
after their lords’ decease” (l. 8). It is therefore prema-
ture to think that the sonnet has moved from describ-
ing the poet’s melancholy to treating the world.
The third quatrain expands this despondent sense of
pregnancy without birth by returning to the poet’s per-
spective. Now, looking on agriculture, he does not
anticipate its eventual harvest. Rather, its very abun-
dance reminds him of the “hope of orphans, and unfa-
thered fruit” (l. 10). Hope, in this metaphorical sense,
is orphaned, unrealized, split off. The fruit is “unfa-
thered” and therefore separated from its parentage.
Time is poised, almost unmoving. The third quatrain
offers these counterintuitive metaphors of arrested fer-
tility to recall the problem of yearning with which the
poem began. The poet is waiting, looking ahead, with
the very sense of time to come that underscores hope.
Matters will not improve for him until he and the beau-
tiful young aristocrat are reunited, since “summer and
his pleasures wait on thee” (l. 11).
The concluding COUPLET begins where the third
quatrain ends—with the conjunction of the poet’s feel-
ings and his views of nature. Now, in his eyes, the
young aristocrat’s absence has made “the very birds” be
silent (l. 12). Correcting himself, the poet allows that if
the birds do sing, they do so with little “cheer.” A SYN-
ECDOCHE for nature, the birds are thus as woeful as our
poet. The PERSONIFICATION then becomes even stronger
as their dispirited singing somehow causes leaves on
the trees to “look pale” (l. 14), itself a harbinger of
decline and death. Sonnet 97 emphasizes absence and
therefore is best linked to Sonnets 43–51. It ends by
passing over the period of celebration associated with
harvest and instead setting its sights on barren winter.
See also SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS (OVERVIEW).
Larry T. ShillockShakespeare’s sonnets: Sonnet 98 (“From you
have I been absent in the spring”) WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE (1599) Sonnet 98 continues the
romantic themes of Sonnet 97, in which the narrator
grieves the absence of his beloved during the “barren-
ness” of winter and fi nds it impossible to bear spring or
summer without the object of his affection. Pining for
his beloved during spring—a time of birdsongs (l. 5),
fl owers (ll. 6, 9, 10), and delight (l. 11)—the poet of
Sonnet 98 yearns for his lover and cannot enjoy the
season’s gifts of birth, regrowth, and beauty. While
new life and beauty are evident, even spurring “heavy
Saturn” (associated with old age and Father Time, 1.4)
to rejoice, the woeful speaker fi nds foul company in
“April, dressed in all his trim” (l. 2). Although he
speaks of “the lily’s white,” “the deep vermillion of the
rose,” and of “the sweet smell”—poetically “playing”
with spring—several contradictory conjunctions, such
as yet, or, nor, and but, reveal that the speaker loves and
misses his beloved, and they possibly point to an
awareness that his feelings are selfi sh. Clearly theseSHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS: SONNET 98 383