Sonnet 97

Estrangement and Return

Notes

TLN 1346rhetorical device
“the pleasure of the fleeting year”
The poet addresses the Fair Youth as the thing that gives the year its meaning -- the one pleasure that makes the passing seasons worthwhile. 'Fleeting' (rapidly passing) names the year as something that slips away; the youth is what redeems it. This opening sets up the sonnet's central paradox: summer passed, and with it any pleasure the year contained.
historical The Fair Youth, the Dark Lady, and the Rival Poet
TLN 1350archaic vocab
“teeming autumn, big with rich increase, Bearing the wanton burden of the prime”
'Teeming' means heavily productive, swarming with fruit -- its root sense is 'pregnant' or 'bringing forth young.' 'Prime' here means spring, not primacy: autumn 'bears the wanton burden of the prime' because it carries to harvest the offspring that spring generated freely ('wanton' = unrestrained, freely given). The cluster turns the season into a pregnant figure bringing another season's children to term.
TLN 1354archaic vocab
“hope of orphans, and unfather'd fruit”
'Unfather'd' means fatherless -- the harvest exists but is orphaned from the summer that generated it. 'Hope of orphans' means the kind of hope orphans have: thin, dependent, easily crushed. The paired images say that autumn's abundance, for all its visual richness, feels like the anxious hope of children who have no father to secure their future.