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Sir Thomas Wyatt:
A 30-Something Tom Cat
With Some Jingle in his Pocket
and a Way With Words?
Sir Thomas Wyatt isn’t read a great deal outside of classrooms now, but his work is lyrical, his life interesting, and he has earned an occasional hearing and a place in our poetic affection. He is historically important for several reasons. He is one of the poets who introduced that ever-lovely form, the Petrarchan or Italian sonnet into English. He was also a member of the court of Henry VIII, an uncertain position for many including Henry’s several wives.
Wyatt did time in the Tower of London, in part for being Anne Bolyn’s (“Anne of a thousand Days”) lovers. He witnessed her decapitation through the grate of his cell door, and wrote of this experience a poem that included the lines:
The
bell tower showed me such sight
That in my head sticks day and night.
There did I learn out of a grate,
For all favour, glory, or might,
That yet circa Regna tonat.
In case your Latin’s a little rusty, circa Regna tonat translates to, "It thunders through the realms," a quote from Seneca’s play, Phaedra. Sir Tom also evidenced great affection for Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII, 1540-1542. She is sometimes known by Henry’s reference to her as "the rose without a thorn."
Surprisingly enough, Sir Thomas Wyatt managed to die of natural causes in 1542. He was 39.
I found it to be a pleasure to find a moment away from all the cares of the world to read the below poem aloud, all the while considering the narrator and his lovers and to consider how similar and dissimilar they were in many respects to present day individuals. His buddy, she whose “loose gown did from her shoulders fall:” Was she Anne of a thousand Days? In my imagination, she was certainly a 16th century example of a woman who was sexually self-determinant. When I envision Wyatt, I see a 30-year-old Tom Cat with some jingle in his pocket, a way with words, an irreverent sense of fun, and beneath it all a good heart. Ever know anyone like that? JRG
The Lover Showeth How He Is Forsaken Of Such As He Sometime Enjoyed
They flee from me, that sometime did me seek,
With naked foot stalking within my chamber:
Once have I seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild, and do not once remember,
That sometime they have put themselves in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range
Busily seeking in continual change.
Thanked be Fortune, it hath been otherwise
Twenty times better; but once especial,
In thin array, after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown did from her shoulders fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small,
And therewithal sweetly did me kiss,
And softly said, ‘ Dear heart, how like you this?’
It was no dream; for I lay broad awaking:
But all is turn’d now through my gentleness,
Into a bitter fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go of her goodness ;
And she also to use new fangleness.
But since that I unkindly so am served:
How like you this, what hath she now deserved?
The Chickasaw Plum - Volume V - Number 12 - December 2008
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