Sir Thomas Wyatt

Sonnet XV

Clipped from http://sonnets.org/wyatt.htm#007.

Remarks:

This from Wyatt shows his characteristic combination of pure sentiment with a sometimes odd meter, somehow very personal, due perhaps to a reader's uncertainty as to whether this is merely archaic and ungainly, or whether on the contrary, his is a deft wit that knows meter better than we do. Interestingly, although the form (ungainly meter aside) is quite strict — close to Petrarchan — the major rhetorical break occurs after line 7, not line 8 (or maybe it's after line 9), and the final “couplet” is a tercet. This gives the poem a sense of shifting moodiness that accords with its theme. In the final line, a “gleed” is a glowing coal.