Thomas Wyatt was born over five hundred years ago, and yet his poems leap across the centuries and speak so clearly to us. When I first read ‘They flee from me who sometime did me seek’ when I was about eighteen and just starting my degree, I couldn’t believe it had been written so long ago because it was so vivid and easy to grasp. I’ve always loved Shakespeare, but sometimes his sonnets need a little unpicking, but Wyatt leapt straight off the page. He was born in 1503 and died thirty-nine years later
Looking him up recently I came across some other poems he had written. I may have read them before but they came fresh again to me; here is one I mentioned in a previous post:
Whoso list to hunt
by Sir Thomas Wyatt
Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, helas! I may no more.
The vain travail hath worried me so sore,
I am of them that furthest come behind.
Yet may I by no means, my worried mind
Draw from the deer; but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,
Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I, may spend his time in vain;
And graven in diamonds in letters plain
There is written, her fair neck round about,
“Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am,
And wild to hold, though I seem tame.”
Lois Elsden 