The birthday of William Shakespeare (1564–1616), which we celebrate on the 23rd of April, prompts us to meditate on everything we know about the man, which isn’t all that much. What we don’t know, on the other hand, presents a seemingly inexhaustible source of speculation: what religious convictions he held, what sexual tastes he entertained, whether he or somebody else wrote the plays and poems attributed to him, whether William Shakespeare, poet and playwright, existed at all, or whether his name signifies a conglomeration of geniuses whose own names have been lost to amnesiac time. 

What we know is that the baptism of a son born to John and Mary Shakespeare was recorded in the register of Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, on April 26, 1564. That the child was three days old at the time of his baptism is a matter of tradition, not fact. Artifacts related to his childhood include an example of a horn book from which he “might have learned to read.” In fact, much of Shakespeare’s biographical narrative consists of things he might have done, between that baptismal day in April 1564 and the day of his death, on what was putatively his fifty-second birthday. 

But in the face of all we don’t know and what we venture to think we do, we have the work itself. We have, for example, today’s Poem of the Day, 98th of the 154 sonnets attributed to William Shakespeare and published in folio form in 1609. Whatever we do or don’t know about the poet, the poem’s own voice, in 14 lines of iambic pentameter rhymed ababcdcdefefgg, speaks to us over the distance of four centuries, to lament a lovers’ separation that turns the beauty of “pied April” to wintertime. 

Sonnet 98 
by William Shakespeare 
 
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 leaped with him. 
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell 
Of different flowers in odour 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 lily’s white, 
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose; 
They were but sweet, but figures of delight 
Drawn after you, – you pattern of all those. 
   Yet seem’d it winter still, and, you away, 
   As with your shadow I with these did play. 

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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems are drawn from the deep traditions of English verse: the great work of the past and the living poets who keep those traditions alive. The goal is always to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.