Discussion Topic
Description in Sir Thomas Wyatt's poem "Unstable Dream."
Summary:
In "Unstable Dream," Sir Thomas Wyatt portrays a dream as fleeting and unreliable. The poem describes the dream's deceptive nature, emphasizing its instability and the emotional turmoil it causes. Wyatt uses vivid imagery to depict the dream's transient quality and the confusion it brings to the dreamer, highlighting the contrast between the dream's allure and its ultimate insubstantiality.
What is the description in Wyatt's poem "Unstable Dream"?
“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 is begging this dream, which he addresses directly, to be steadfast for once or at least to be true.
The speaker's dream is sweet, for it is about his beloved. He tastes this sweetness, and he begs the dream to let it remain. But he also knows that as he wakes, he will rue, or regret, the “sudden loss” of the dream's “false feigned grace.” The grace is the return of the speaker's beloved, but it is false and only a deception because it is in a dream.
The speaker's case is dangerous, he asserts, and he is glad that the dream did not really bring his beloved into the midst of his turmoil. Rather, the...
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dream made his spirit come alive. The dream experience of his beloved gave him new vigor. Yet at the same time, it renewed his care, for he is not really with his beloved. The dream, therefore, brings both delight and sorrow, and when it fades, it leaves both a hint of sweetness and grief.
What is Sir Thomas Wyatt describing in lines 8–14 of “Unstable Dream”?
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 sorrow and sweetness.
The speaker feels like his body is in the midst of a storm, and he longs to reach out to embrace his beloved, for only that will bring him relief. Yet his body is “dead” in a way, for it is sleeping. He can only reach out and embrace his beloved in spirit. The body feels no pain, and the spirit experiences great delight.
Yet the sensation cannot remain. The speaker cannot really leap fully into the fires of love, for he is only dreaming. He desperately wishes that a wish alone could keep the dream present. Rather, the dream mocks him, for it shows him what cannot be, and it brings him a “deadly pain.” His beloved is not present and will not be present, and he must suffer from that. Seeing her in his dream seems to have made his desire stronger and her absence more painful.