Poetry & Analysis
Selected Poems
Inspirational PoemsSonnet 97: How like a winter hath my absence been
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 burden of the prime,
Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:
Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me
But hope of orphans, and unfather’d fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute;
Or, if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.
Overview Short Summary
This sonnet is about the emotional winter of absence. It fits poems about letting go and longing because the world remains fruitful, but the speaker feels unable to enjoy it without the beloved.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Separation: Absence turns summer into winter for the speaker.
- Difficulty of moving on: The outside world continues, but inward life feels bare.
- Love and loss: Pleasure seems dependent on the absent person.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is mournful, rich, and reflective. The mood is cold despite the summer setting.
Literary Technique Imagery and Symbols
Winter, December, summer, autumn, orphans, fruit, birds, and pale leaves symbolize absence and emotional barrenness.
Poetic Form Rhyme Scheme and Structure
The sonnet contrasts outer abundance with inner emptiness.
Neutral Tones
We stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod;
—They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.
Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles of years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro
On which lost the more by our love.
The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a-wing….
Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.
Overview Short Summary
Hardy’s poem records the cold moment when a relationship is emotionally over. It is useful for poems about letting go after love because the memory becomes a lesson in emotional clarity.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Letting go after breakup: The relationship is shown as dead in feeling.
- Love and bitterness: The smile is alive only enough to die.
- Life lesson: The memory shapes the speaker’s understanding of deceptive love.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is bleak, bitter, and restrained. The mood is cold because the scene itself feels drained of warmth.
Literary Technique Imagery and Symbols
White sun, pond, gray leaves, dead smile, ominous bird, and winter landscape symbolize emotional ending.
Poetic Form Rhyme Scheme and Structure
The poem’s repeated gray imagery makes the breakup feel final and lifeless.
A Broken Appointment
You did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb,—
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure lovingkindness’ sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
You did not come.
You love not me,
And love alone can lend you loyalty;
— I know and knew it. But, unto the store
Of human deeds divine in all but name,
Was it not worth a little hour or more
To add yet this: Once you, a woman, came
To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be
You love not me?
Overview Short Summary
Hardy’s poem is about waiting for someone who never comes. It fits letting-go poems because the speaker must accept not only lost love, but the absence of compassion.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Letting go of someone: The speaker knows the person does not love him.
- Disappointment: The missed appointment becomes emotionally painful.
- Moving on from hope: The hope-hour ends and the speaker faces the truth.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is wounded, restrained, and direct. The mood is heavy because the absence reveals more than rejection.
Literary Technique Imagery and Symbols
Marching Time, hope-hour, numbness, loyalty, and the missed appointment symbolize the pain of waiting and release.
Poetic Form Rhyme Scheme and Structure
The two stanzas separate the physical absence from the deeper emotional wound.
The Voice
Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.
Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!
Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?
Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.
Overview Short Summary
Hardy’s poem shows how grief makes letting go difficult. The speaker hears the lost woman’s voice, then questions whether it is only the wind.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Grief and letting go: The speaker remains pulled toward the voice of someone gone.
- Memory: The beloved is remembered as she was at the beginning.
- Moving forward: The speaker falters forward even while hearing the call.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is haunted, tender, and uncertain. The mood is lonely because memory and wind blur together.
Literary Technique Imagery and Symbols
Voice, town, air-blue gown, breeze, wet meadow, falling leaves, thorn, and north wind create a scene of grief and movement.
Poetic Form Rhyme Scheme and Structure
The final stanza visually falters, matching the speaker’s painful forward motion.
Break, Break, Break
Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O well for the fisherman’s boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
Overview Short Summary
Tennyson’s poem is about grief for what cannot return. It fits poems about saying goodbye and letting go because the speaker faces the painful truth that a vanished hand and still voice will not come back.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Grief: The speaker longs for a vanished hand and voice.
- Letting go of the past: The tender grace of a dead day cannot return.
- Acceptance through pain: The sea keeps breaking while the speaker’s loss remains.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is mournful and restrained. The mood is oceanic, repetitive, and sad.
Literary Technique Imagery and Symbols
The sea, gray stones, ships, haven, vanished hand, still voice, and dead day symbolize unstoppable time and irreversible loss.
Poetic Form Rhyme Scheme and Structure
The repeated “Break, break, break” gives the poem a wave-like rhythm.
Continue Reading
Related Poems & Articles
More selected reading from Inspirational Poems.
