Shakespeare's winter song says frost bites less than a forgetful friend
Wind and freezing sky are the villains this song dismisses. The winter wind, Shakespeare argues, is kinder than human ingratitude, and a bitter frost stings less than being forgotten by a friend. Then a cheerful refrain about green holly insists, with obvious irony, that this life is most jolly.
The song is built on comparison. Its first stanza tells the winter wind to blow, because it is not so unkind as man's ingratitude. The reasoning is sly: the wind's tooth is less keen because it is not seen. Weather is honest about its harshness, while betrayal arrives disguised, so the invisible injury of a person cuts deeper than the rude breath of a storm.
The second verse repeats the move with frost. The bitter sky may freeze and even warp the waters, but it does not bite as close as benefits forgotten, and its sting is gentler than a friend who no longer remembers you. Nature here becomes almost a comfort, a known enemy set beside the unpredictable coldness of people.
Between the stanzas comes a refrain that sounds like a drinking song. Heigh-ho, sing to the green holly; most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly; this life is most jolly. Holly stays green through winter, a fitting emblem for a singer who keeps cheerful by expecting little of others. The jollity is clearly bitter, and the repetition sharpens the joke each time it returns.
The writer behind it is often called the greatest in English. Born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised on 26 April 1564, Shakespeare was the son of a glover and alderman, John Shakespeare, and probably studied Latin authors at the town's King's New School. At 18 he married Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior, and their son Hamnet died at eleven. Between 1585 and 1592 documents barely mention him, the so-called lost years, which later storytellers filled with legends of deer poaching and horse minding that little evidence supports. Few private documents survive, which is partly why his life still invites so much guesswork.
Source: PoetryDB — Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind · Public domain (GB: author died 1616, life+70 expired; US: author died 1616, so every lifetime publication is from 1930 or earlier)
