This poem should be familiar to a lot of fans of Tudor history
Whoso List to Hunt by Thomas Wyatt
This week, a heartfelt but enigmatic love poem from the court of King Henry VIII
Thomas Wyatt’s double life as poet and Tudor courtier brings to mind a famous aphorism of WH Auden’s: “Private faces in public places/ Are wiser and nicer/ Than public faces in private places”. Wyatt was a successful “public face”: he first entered the service of Henry VIII at the age of 13, and, despite vicissitudes (including two spells of imprisonment), he retained his head, and enjoyed a triumphant later career as ambassador to the court of Charles V. He travelled widely through southern Europe: he imported, popularised and, with the help of the Earl of Surrey, gave an English shape to the Petrarchan sonnet. But what we hear in his poetry is never secondhand or artificial: it is a personal note, a note of authentic private feeling, which dominates, and is never dominated by, poetic conventions. Perhaps it was a similar note of personal credibility that sustained his popularity in the public glare of the court. Or perhaps it was sheer cunning.
…
Whoso List to HuntWhoso 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.’
