Clare NicholsonMrs. GardnerEnglish 10, Period 211 September 2014

Chained to the PastYour absence is a wound, deep in my heart;The bullet of your last goodbye remains.With your careless ways, youve torn me apart;Yet to you, I feel bound with heavy chains.These chains are made from memories and theyAre invincible until I cant rememberThe color of your eyes, so warm, yet grayAs a cold, dismal sky in December.But how can I forget your loving touch,Constant joy, and how it rubbed off on me?In this late hour, youd comfort me so much,But here I am, alone, anything but free-Trapped in the memories that we once shared,I wonder, once more, if you ever cared.

Sonnet 97 AnalysisWilliam Shakespeare's Sonnet 97 tells of the burdenful time that the poet spends away from his love: Though their time apart is that of thriving summer and autumn, the absence of his love makes it seem as joyless and bleak as hopeless as December. Shakespeare integrates bold literary and sound devices into the melancholy sonnet to bring the heartache of unfulfilled love to life. Starting out the sonnet, the poet compares his loves absence to the winter with a simile; How like the winter hath my absence been / From thee. The word winter suggests that the poet feels as cold and barren inside as a snowy, winter landscape without his love. Sound devices are found throughout the sonnet to build on this idea, such as the resonant alliteration found in line three - What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!. There, the phrases freezings have I felt and dark days seen are so charged that the reader can only imagine the grim times that the poet has been through. It is later revealed that these dark days occurred during the summer and autumn, though the tone is still not positive; The teeming autumn, big with rich increase / Bearing the wanton burden of the prime. A dark consonance is present in the repetitive r sound of the verse, emphasizing the negative connotation of those words with that sound - bearing the wanton burden of the prime - showing how unhappy a time, how heavy this lively time of year- the prime- feels without his love by his love by his side. Overall, the poet struggles with a loneliness internal winter, despite the warmth and life all around him. The lively time of year burdens him, because his love cannot enjoy its pleasures with him. As time continues to flow and seasons continue to change around the poet, he cannot help but feel sorrow for the time passed without his love, trapping himself in his own loneliness, his own winter.