Sonnet 97 Figurative Language

William Shakespeare, in his sonnet, “Sonnet 97” laments about how being separated from his lover feels like winter, no matter what season it may be. First, to reveal the feeling of loss caused by the separation from his lover, Shakespeare employs simile: “How like a winter hath my absence been/ From thee”; second, Shakespeare uses visual and tactile imagery to reiterate the sense of winter already established by stating, “what freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!”; third, Shakespeare compares “this time remov'd”: the time he and his lover were apart, to “widow'd wombs after their lord's decease” in order to amplify the grief he is experiencing and indicate that this is no regular loss; next, Shakespeare uses descriptive details to describes
his barrenness as he mentions the “hope of orphans and unfather'd fruit”; lastly, as an example of auditory imagery, Shakespeare states that with “[his lover] away, the very birds are mute” to symbolize the extent of futility that encompasses not only the speaker, but the world around him. This sonnet can be classified into three parts: the speaker comparing the absence of his lover to winter in the first quatrain, the speaker comparing and contrasting his predicament by providing images of different seasons in lines five to eleven, and the speaker showing how his loss affects his surroundings in the last three lines. In a depressed and nostalgic tone, Shakespeare addresses people who dwell on past relationships but does not advise them to move on: he only describes his issue in hopes that they will learn from him.