Sonnet 97 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

. It's a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man. It is the first of three sonnets describing a separation between the speaker and the beloved.

Paraphrase

My separation from you has seemed like winter, since you give pleasure to the year. Winter has seemed to be everywhere, even though in reality our separation occurred during summer and fall, when the earth produces plant life like a widow giving birth after the death of her husband. Yet I saw these fruits of nature as hopeless orphans, since it could not be summer unless you were here; since you were away, even the birds did not sing, or rather sang so plaintively that they made the very leaves look pale, thinking of winter.

Sources and analysis

Following Edmond Malone

Edmond Malone

Edmond Malone was an Irish Shakespearean scholar and editor of the works of William Shakespeare.Assured of an income after the death of his father in 1774, Malone was able to give up his law practice for at first political and then more congenial literary pursuits. He went to London, where he...

, T. W. Baldwin notes a resemblance between this poem's trope for the seasons and the "childing autumn" of A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that was written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta...

2.1.112; he traces the figure to Ovid

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...

.

Dowden says that 97 seems to begin a new group of sonnets, comprising 97, 98, and 99. Edward Hubler remarks on the "passages of unobtrusive melody and easy grace."

Thematically, the poem belongs among those poems treating absence or separation. Hilton Landry groups the sonnet with others, such as 54

Sonnet 54

Shakespeare's Sonnet 54 uses an extended metaphor to develop the theme of the beauty of the beloved and the preservative power of verse.-Introduction:...

 and 55

Sonnet 55

Sonnet 55 is one of the best and most critically acclaimed sonnets of the 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man....

, in which the speaker is forced to call to mind an inferior mental substitute for his absent beloved.