No Comment, Quotation — November 15, 2009, 7:11 am
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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 themself 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;
Therewithall sweetly did me kiss
And softly said, “dear heart, how like you this?”
It was no dream: I lay broad waking.
But all is turned thorough my gentleness
Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go of her goodness,
And she also, to use newfangleness.
But since that I so kindly am served
I would fain know what she hath deserved.
–Sir Thomas Wyatt, The Lover Showeth How He is Forsaken of Such as He Sometime Enjoyed (ca. 1540) in The Poetical Works of Sir Thomas Wyatt (J. Yeowell ed. 1904), p. 32.
Sir Thomas Wyatt was a diplomat and poet at the court of Henry VIII. He was twice thrown in the Tower of London, once on account of a rebellion launched by his namesake son who sought to put Princess Elizabeth (later Elizabeth I) on the throne, and on an earlier occasion probably because he was suspected of being a lover of Anne Boyeln. This very elegant poem speaks of an illicit affair (or perhaps several) and it has sometimes been supposed to be that with the king’s favorite.
Listen to a reading of the poem by Sir Thomas Wyatt (actually, the voice is Jim Clark’s):
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Listen to Julian Bream play My Lord Willoughby’s Welcome Home (mid-16th cen., arrangement John Dowland).
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More from Scott Horton:
No Comment — April 12, 2013, 11:11 am
A new report from Seton Hall University exposes government surveillance of attorney-client conversations
No Comment, Six Questions — March 18, 2013, 9:00 am
Rashid Khalidi on how the United States sustains the failure of the Israel-Palestine peace process
No Comment, Six Questions — February 4, 2013, 9:00 am
Alex Gibney on his documentary investigating the Roman Catholic Church’s handling of child sex-abuse cases
Years of consideration preceding the inclusion of the word “phat” in Random House’s 1996 Compact Unabridged Dictionary:
Scientists created crash helmets that stink when cracked and fruit flies to whom blue light smells delicious.
In Belize, a construction company bulldozed a 2,300-year-old Mayan temple to make road fill.
“This is the heart of the magic factory, the place where medicine is infused with the miracles of science, and I’ve come to see how it’s done.”
