I’ve been dipping into Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells’s All the Sonnets of Shakespeare. As ever, I find this one particularly gripping:

……….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 … Continue Reading

In terms of its theme and emotional dynamics 15 is one of Shakespeare’s simpler sonnets, but it has enormous power. We feel this from the very start:

When I consider everything that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment,

The power is partly in the sheer vastness of that initial assertion and partly in the explosive way vastness is contrasted with littleness in the second line.  This creates an extreme sense of suspense – where can he be going with this? – which is in itself intensely involving. The third line makes a similar contrast but far from tamely … Continue Reading