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[The long love that in my thought doth harbour]

Thomas Wyatt

1503 –

1542

The long love that in my thought doth harbour
And in mine heart doth keep his residence,
Into my face presseth with bold pretence
And therein campeth spreading his bannèr.
She that me learns to love and suffèr
And wills that my trust, and lust’s negligence
Be reined by reason, shame, and reverence,
With his hardiness takes displeasùre.
Wherewithall unto the heart’s forest he fleèth,
Leaving his enterprise with pain and cry,
And there him hideth, and not appearèth.
What may I do when my master fearèth?
But in the field with him to live and die
For good is the life, ending faithfully.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on April 19, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

Born in 1503, Sir Thomas Wyatt is often credited with being one of the poets that introduced the sonnet into English

Themes

About this Poem

“[The long love that in my thought doth harbour]” was featured in Bernhard Ten Brink’s History of English Literature (George Bell & Sons, 1902). About the poem, author Lisa Klein writes in her essay, “The Petrarchanism of Sir Thomas Wyatt Reconsidered,” collected in The Work of Dissimilitude (University of Delaware Press, 1992), “A standard critical exercise is the comparison of Wyatt’s ‘The long love that in my thought doth harbour’ and Surrey’s ‘Love, that doth reign and live within my thought’ to their Petrarchan original, ‘Amour, che nel penser.’ […] In Wyatt’s poem, love presses into the speaker’s face ‘with bold pretense,’ then, upon displeasing the mistress, flees to the ‘heart’s forest . . . / Leaving his enterprise with pain and cry.’ […] Wyatt preserves Petrarch’s sense, but intensifies the speaker’s pain and, hence, the surprise of his seeming resignation at the end.”

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Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, hélas, I may no more.
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that farthest cometh 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,
Sithens 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:

Thomas Wyatt

1550

My Galley Charged with Forgetfulness

My galley charged with forgetfulness
   Thorough sharp seas in winter nights doth pass
   ’Tween rock and rock; and eke mine enemy, alas,
   That is my lord, steereth with cruelness;
And every oar a thought in readiness,
   As though that death were light in such a case.
   An endless wind doth tear the sail apace
   Of forced sighs, and trusty fearfulness
A rain of tears, a cloud of dark disdain,
   Hath done the wearied cords great hinderance;
   Wreathed with error and eke with igno

Thomas Wyatt

1557

They Flee from Me

They flee from me, that sometime did me seek,
With naked foot stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them, gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild, and do not remember
That sometime they put themselves in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range,
Busily seeking with a continual change.

Thanked be Fortune it hath been otherwise,
Twenty times better; but once in special,
In thin array, after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small,
And therewith all sweetly did me kiss
And softly said, “Dear heart, how like y

Thomas Wyatt

1557

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[The long love that in my thought doth harbour]

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