SIR THOMAS WYATT

[1503–1542]

They flee from me

Born in Kent, Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542) was educated at St. John’s College, Cambridge. He spent most of his life as a courtier and diplomat, serving King Henry VIII as ambassador to Spain and as a member of several missions to Italy and France. In his travels Wyatt discovered the Italian writers of the High Renaissance, whose work he translated, thus introducing the sonnet form into English. He was arrested twice and charged with treason, sent to the Tower of London, and acquitted in 1541. Aristocratic poets at the time rarely published their poems themselves: works circulated in manuscript and in published collections (“miscellanies”) gathered by printers. The most important of these is a volume published by Richard Tottel in 1557 titled Songs and Sonnets, but more commonly known as Tottel’s Miscellany, which includes ninety-seven of Wyatt’s sonnets and delightful lyrics.

They flee from me, that sometime did me seek,

With naked foot stalking in my chamber.

I have seen them, gentle, tame, and meek,

That now are wild, and do not remember

That sometime they put themselves in danger

To take bread at my hand; and now they range,

Busily seeking with a continual change.

Thankèd be fortune it hath been otherwise,

Twenty times better; but once in special,

In thin array, after a pleasant guise,

When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,

And she me caught in her arms long and small,

There with all sweetly did me kiss

And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?”

It was no dream, I lay broad waking.

But all is turned, thorough my gentleness,

Into a strange fashion of forsaking;

And I have leave to go, of her goodness,

And she also to use newfangleness.

But since that I so kindly am served,

I fain would know what she hath deserved.