"Sonnet XCVII: How like a Winter hath my Absence been" by William Shakespeare

Sonnet XCVII: How like a Winter hath my Absence been

by William Shakespeare

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 remov'd was summer's time,

The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,

Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime,

Like widow'd wombs after their lords' 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.


In general, I agree with Edgar Allen Poe about the size of poems: " I hold that long poems don't exist." In his essay, "The Poetic Principle", Poe felt readers get excited when reading a great poem but lose interest if the poem was of "any great length." Of course the above sonnet by Shakespeare is required to be 14 lines in order to be a sonnet, but I prefer the shorter poem as a whole.

There are many ways of looking at a particular poem or work of a poet that is valid and in the history of literary criticism one approach will be more popular than others. Sometimes, I like to look at it from the approach of what was happening in the life of the poet and sometimes not. I did that last night in some poetry by D.H. Lawrence. It convinced me that the true model of the lover of Lady Chatterley in the book, Lady Chatterley's Lover, was not Mrs. Lawrence's second husband as he claimed to be. Lawrence was a better writer than that and the Italian a worse man than that.

In college, it seemed to me that looking at a work of literature and poetry was often done through the life of the poet and writer as my memory serves me. It could have been the time I went to school or when the teachers were trained. I don't know. As I said, sometimes this way of looking at a poem or novel or whatever has its advantages and sometimes it does not. I can see in my own life that looking at a novel or even a short story would not be particularly useful. In Shakespeare's life, I would think there would be no advantage at all since so little of his life is known and even the authorship of his plays and sonnets are up to question. (In my mind, this is no longer a question. I am sure Shakespeare is the author and poet of his work.) I have read books and seen programs in which studing the times when the work was written was illuminating.

However, in the case of this particular entry, I chose this particular sonnet because it involves the season, winter. Since coming to an area that has seasons, I have been enjoying them especially after being in a part of the country when I felt particularly that I was more of a prisoner of them more than anything else. The seasons were more pronounced and where I am living now there are definite seasons but none of the confining aspects of them as my home is in Northern California.

The sonnet was written by a man as he is thinking about a woman he has left somewhere, someplace else while he probably is earning a living. He had left her in summer. It is possible that he did not leave her at all and that she had died too or their love had died. That is one of the things about Shakespeare that I really love and that there are many layers of meaning in his plays and poetry and many ways of interpreting what things mean. I appreciated that when I was writing essays in my Shakespeare English class although I did not care for the professor as he saw many of his students for possible rivals in interpreting and advancing in literary criticism. He saw his students as upstarts that needed to be keep down.( Sadly, he died less than six months after I took his class. He knew he was dying but could not stand to stay home and slowly take his leave. He was competitively until the very end. )

I grew up in a place where I could not tell the seasons at all except summers were the months that the schools were closed and I could read as much as I want. I also could not wear shoes as my mother felt it was a waste to wear shoes if we weren't in school or in church.( I had learned a terrible regard for shoes that I never lost. I wear them all of the time. I am wearing them now although I am in the living room in a chair and the room is completely carpeted. My mother has very bad feet because she insists on wearing cheap shoes although she can afford good shoes now.)

When I first lived somewhere during the winter, I was astonished how different everything looked. Deciduous trees are bare in December but they are swelling up like pregnant women about now with buds of leaves and blossoms. When I went driving around yesterday, I noticed so many trees in full blossom. Winter ends about March 21st so having so many trees in full bloom in February used to bother me.

In England, it stays lighter in the Spring longer than it does here. I remember it being light in May at 10 pm and someone told me that it was light that long because it was higher in the Northern Hemisphere than we are here in Northern California. (They also don't have trouble with flies and don't have screens which I thought was nifty.)

Of course, it is possible the poet isn't in winter at all but only feels he is because of the loss of his love's company. We have all felt that way from time to time. We miss someone and feel as if everything as turned gray. That was the first thing I noticed about winter in a place that was not in the city. The countryside turns gray, the grass, trees, skies all the color of slate gray as if one took a pencil and colored everything in with pencil gray. Even the pine trees that keep its pine needles looked gray to me. Its winter here but nothing looks gray. I am looking out the window to the west and see the different hues of green. Ah, California.

The poet calls autumn teeming with excess. Usually, I don't think of fall that way. It is a time when things seem to be dying and slowing down although the colors are brilliant and spectacular. Birds such as swans, duck, goose are all getting ready to leave except for a few breeds. Canada Geese don't leave which makes one wonder why they are called "Canada". In that regard, there is a lot of movement to get things done such as raking leaves, sawing wood for the winter, covering things up before the snow and so on. But "teeming with excess" ? I don't understand that one.

My favorite approach of looking at poetry is to relate it to things in my life which is what I have done here. Is the poem something that speaks to the reader? What does it say? What memories does it bring up? I like those questions. Each reader brings to each poem something unique and of course valid. I would hate to be the type of teacher, instructor, professor that demands one sort of answer and no other. A question of color symbolism is important in a poem but the answer may vary. If a person lived in Florida, then a question about snow would have different meanings than to a person who was raised in Maine. It would be right if one based it one some sort of reasoning that was valid and could be backed in some way. In this country, white is often symbolizes purity which is important in marriage; however in other countries women are not married in white but people are buried in that color instead as it symbolizes sterility, death. It all depends. It is all relative. It is all fun.