Hello and welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson,

and today is Monday, February 12, 2004. Today we have two poems, Sonnets 98 and 99 from William Shakespeare's

Sonnet Cycle. These are classic Shakespearean sonnets in that they compare the beloved to the beauties of nature,

but in these sonnets the beloved is absent, and that changes the poet's view of nature slightly.

As you'll see, I'll read 98, offer a few remarks, and then we'll finish with Sonnet 99.

Here's Sonnet 99. Here is Sonnet 98.

From you have I been absent in the spring, when proud pied April, dressed in all his trim, hath put a spirit of youth in everything. That heavy saturn laughed and leapt with him,

yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell of different flowers in odor and in hue,

could make me any summer's story tell, or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew.

Nor did I wonder at the lilies white, nor praised the deep vermilion in the rose.

They were but sweet, but figures of delight, drawn after you, you pattern of all those.

Yet seemed it winter still and you away, as with your shadow I with these did play.

So here the beloved is absent and the beauties of nature are disappointing

their cause for sadness because all they do is remind him of the

beauties of his beloved.

And he attempts to console himself or satisfy himself with those lesser beauties to little effect,

it seems.

His tone will change, though, in Sonnet 99, in this part of the sonnet cycle, it seems like the poet is maybe going through some of the stages of grief.

Here we have sadness in the next one.

We'll hear a little anger as he turns on the beautiful things of nature

and hurl some accusations at them.

Again, prompted by the absence of his beloved.

...