I was just passing through the sitting room where my husband was watching TV and stopped and joined him; the programme which was on was called A Very British Renaissance, and it was, as its title suggests about what Dr James Fox believes happened in Britain in the sixteenth century. Described as ‘the explosion of art and ideas’ Dr Fox presented his views of a revolution by painters, sculptors, poets, playwrights, composers, inventors, explorers, craftsmen and scientists who changed Elizabethan world views and what he believes was a cultural revolution in Britain
The programme picked up specific examples to illustrate his theory, and included a mini-biography and appreciation of one of my favourite poets,. Sir Thomas Wyatt. Poems were quoted, but here is another example of Wyat’s sonnets, so fresh, so current, speaking across five centuries to us:
Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, alas, I may no more;
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that furthest come behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied 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 with diamonds in letters plain,
There is written her fair neck round about,
“Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.”
Lois Elsden 