very much involved in developing the rhyme and meter, and creating the form of "quatrains" (four-line stanzas) used; the men, collectively, are responsible for designing what is now known as the English, Elizabethan or Shakespearean sonnet, and the two men are referred to by some as "fathers of the English sonnet."

In their translations, Wyatt and Howard both speak of love, and how their "master" acts in the face of that love—in reaction to the different woman each one loves. My sense is that the heart is speaking of his "master:" the man in whose chest that heart lies.

Each author begins by stating how firmly "encamped" love has become within his heart. Wyatt writes:

The long love that in my thought doth harbour,
And in mine heart doth keep his residence...

Howard's poem sounds very similar as he refers to love's place in his heart:

Love that doth reign and live within my thought
And built his seat within my captive breast...

The use of terminology that deals with fighting, fearful departure, and allegiance is obvious in both. Wyatt uses terms such as "bold pretence," "campeth," "banner," "suffer," "reverence," "fleeth," "leaving," "hideth," "not appeareth," "feareth," and "in the field with him to live or die."

Howard also uses similar wording such as "reign," "captive," "arms," "fought," "banner," "coward," "flight," "lurk," "guilt," and "Yet from my lord shall not my foot remove."

The imagery seems to support the idea of each heart falling in love, and the heart's owner finding it too overwhelming to remain—so that the man runs away rather than to stay and "do battle," and that in the end, the heart must remain true to his "master," even if he "bolts."

Additional Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Howard,_Earl_of_Surrey

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 called the Rime sparse (Scattered Rhymes). In all three poems, Cupid, the god of selfish desire, is mocked for his cowardice when he is faced with determined opposition by a virtuous woman.

Wyatt’s style is usually considered rougher and less smoothly flowing (less “mellifluous”) than Howard’s. Wyatt’s poems often seem a bit less easy to understand, initially, than Howard’s do. Yet Wyatt’s more complicated phrasing, like that of later “Metaphysical” poets such as John Donne, often rewards re-reading. Wyatt’s use of meter or rhythm is usually less predictable and regular than Howard’s. Howard usually employs a clear, straightforward, iambic pentameter meter. In this meter, each even syllable is emphasized (as in reBEL, rather than REBel). Wyatt’s poetry, in general, is more likely to pose problems for a first-time reader, but it is this very unpredictability that lends so many of Wyatt’s poems so much of their energy and vitality.

In the opening line of Wyatt’s poem, for instance, it is not immediately clear that the “long love” mentioned is actually Cupid.  This fact does not become absolutely clear until line 4, with the reference to “his.” In Howard’s poem, on the other hand, the use of personification is clear right from the start. This is just one example, among many others that could be cited, of the ways Wyatt’s poems can initially seem a bit more difficult than Howard’s.