Sir Thomas Wyatt

“Unstable Dream” by Thomas Wyatt describes the pain of a dream that the speaker has about his absent beloved. Dreams are always unstable. They fly away quickly. They do not remain. Yet the speaker...

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) usually wrote his poems in sonnet form, specifically, in the Italian or Petrarchan form, but in the case of "Is It Possible," he chose a form, or variant of a form,...

In his sonnet “Farewell Love and all thy Laws for ever,” Thomas Wyatt includes the themes of betrayal and unrequited love within his larger treatment of Love as a person or an idea that will no...

It is generally believed that Sir Thomas Wyatt wrote “Forget Not Yet” for Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife and mother of Queen Elizabeth I. By most accounts, Wyatt pressed his suit for Anne...

This question you ask hits upon a complex point in criticism of Wyatt's work. Critics generally agree that Wyatt spoke in his poems with a duplicity that veiled a social or political or cultural...

Imagery can be of two sorts: trope and scheme. Imagery refers to the word and phrase choices a writer makes to inspire mental pictures or visions of his poem or prose that make his work live in the...

Thomas Wyatt's sonnets express problems with love, and this one is no exception. The speaker first says there are three kinds of birds: those that see clearly by light of day, those that see well...

Thomas Wyatt writes this poem to express his ambivalent feelings about love. Love for him is a paradox, a state of being that is full of contradictions. Some of the contradictory emotions he has...

The structure of Wyayy's poem, in iambic (x/) trimeter (three metric feet x/ x/ x/), is four sestets in am atypical rhyme scheme of a b b b a c, with subsequent stanzas replacing /b/ with /d, e, f/...

We don't know the exact circumstances alluded to in this particular poem, but we can offer a general context for Wyatt's poetry. He was a courtier to King Henry VIII of England in the first half of...

The response below suggests that Wyatt is writing a parody of Petrarch's Sonnet 140. This may not be the correct term, since parody involves a critical distancing from, or even mockery of, the...

In "So Cruel Prison," Henry Howard begins by lamenting his imprisonment at Windsor, in the very castle where he used to play as a child and where he spent his formative years as a young man. Howard...

Supposedly, this is a sonnet written about Thomas Wyatt's failed suit for the hand of Anne Boleyn—who, of course, was to marry King Henry VIII and, later, was beheaded on his orders. The poet...

Recently having read Sir Thomas Wyatt's sonnet, "The Long Love," and Henry Howard's "Love that doth reign and live," I would suggest that though both men choose to love, they also prefer to avoid...

Let's take a close look at “The Long Love that in my Thought doth Harbour” by Sir Thomas Wyatt, which is all about the movements of love and its seeming rejection by the beloved. The poem begins...

Love is a very powerful emotion that can bring great joy and fulfillment to people's lives. It can also, however, bring considerable grief, suffering, and emotional pain. It can drive people crazy...

The speaker of the poem "I Find No Peace" is not identified; the narrator speaks about universal themes of being discontented and conflicted in his life. His tone is one of torment and conflict, as...

This is one of Wyatt's most famous poems, but the language can indeed be a little impenetrable. Roughly rendered in modern English, the poet is saying: Will you leave me like this? Say no, say no,...

Irony and paradox appear frequently in the poetry of Sir Thomas Wyatt, and certainly they appear in his poems “Farewell love” and “They Flee From Me.” In “Farewell love,” the chastened speaker bids...

In Sir Thomas Wyatt's poem, "I find no peace, and all my war is done," the reader has a sense of a man conflicted by the world around him. This poem is written as a Petrarchan (Italian) sonnet...

The theme of "Blame Not My Lute" is in keeping with the courtly love poetry that he learned while on a diplomatic trip to Italy and tells of love within the "love is like war" Petrarchian love...

This is a poem composed of fourteen lines, so arguably it is a sonnet. However, its structure and rhyme scheme do not quite mark it out as either a Petrarchan sonnet or its cousin, the...

Sir Thomas Wyatt’s poem beginning “The long love” and Henry Howard’s poem beginning “Love, that doth reign” are highly similar, mainly because both translate poem 140 from the Rima sparse...

Sir Thomas is sailing out the Tagus River that runs through Lisbon, Portugal. Portugal was then under Spanish dominion, and Sir Thomas has just fulfilled a diplomatic mission for King Henry VIII as...

[eNotes editors are only permitted to answer one question per posting. Additional questions should be posted separately.] Sir Thomas Wyatt's "The Long Love" and Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey's...

Wyatt’s contributions to both the English Renaissance and English Literature were extremely significant. As the son of Henry Wyatt, a Privy Councillor in the court of Henry VII, Thomas Wyatt grew...

Some say this ode is written to Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife, whom Wyatt pursued and was imprisoned for pursuing. Whether or not Anne Boleyn is the subject, the poem is a sonnet addressed...

Sir Thomas Wyatt did have some troubles in his lifetime but it is possible that the tone of his poems also reflect that which is considered his greatest contribution to English poetry. After...

In this sonnet, the feeling of Love is personified and portrayed as staying in the speaker's thoughts as a ship does in a harbor (line 1), residing in his heart (line 2), pressing boldly close to...

Thomas Wyatt's poem, the full title of which is "Whoso List to Hunt, I Know where is an Hind," can be difficult to interpret after a quick read. This poem is one of the earliest sonnets, and even...

Wyatt's choice of imagery in this poem of betrayed love portrays physical action, which would fall in the category of imagery of motion or kinesthetic sensation (Wheeler). Some of these images are...

Wyatt was the first translator of Petrarch into English. As such, his work had a significant impact on the development of the sonnet in English literature. While Wyatt is often thought of as an...

"Forget Not Yet" is a poem that is based around the desire of the speaker to commend himself to his lover as he talks about the many hardships he has faced and the sufferings he has endured to...

Nothing much complicated here. The speaker tells his lady love not to blame the instrument he uses (a lute in this case) for the song of complaint he is singing about her: My Lute and strings may...

Both Wyatt’s poem and Howard’s are translations into English of a poem originally written by the Italian poet Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch). The poem is number 140 of Petrarch’s collection of poems...

Important to understanding this poem by Wyatt is the title that he has given this verse: "The Lover Excuseth Him of Words Wherewith He was Unjustly Charged." Let us remember that so many of Wyatt's...

Excellent work by your fellow student. This is not quite a Shakespearean quote, nor is it a correct quote. It is, indeed, from a sonnet written by Sir Thomas Wyatt. The sonnet, like so many from...

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) was a prolific poet in the early sixteenth century. He is credited with introducing the Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet to English literature. As your question suggests,...

In lines 8–14 of “Unstable Dream,” the speaker describes his reaction to the dream he recounted in the first half of the poem. This dream was about his absent beloved and has brought him both...

Sir Thomas Wyatt was a member of Henry VIII's court and imprisoned - more than once - in the Tower of London. When Fortune Smiles Not,Only Patience Comforteth is an ode, very popular in The...

This is one of the most famous of all of Wyatt’s poems. The speaker of the poem is a man who is now forsaken by the women who, at one time, used to seek him out, presumably for erotic encounters....

This poem is a translation of Petrarch's sonnet 104, "I find no peace, and yet I make no war." In Wyatt's sonnet, as in Petrarch's, the narrator goes up and down emotionally because his beloved is...

Imagery in a poem is the use of words to create images. For example, the poet may use sensory details to describe how things look, taste, and smell. Figurative language is used to paint a more...

The poem by Sir Thomas Wyatt that begins “If thou wilt mighty be” might be interpreted as follows: Stanza one advises that anyone who wishes to be powerful should reject uncontrolled passion (1-2)....

Sir Thomas Wyatt’s voice of wisdom in “Farewell Love and all thy Laws for ever” arguably manifests in his disavowal of love. As the title of the poem implies, Wyatt is severing himself from love....

In this poem, the speaker has just suffered the loss of his lover's affections, who has just completely changed her mind about him and her love for him. The emotional impact of this is summarised...