As the lockdown continues, I've decided to pick up a book that's been lying on my floor for quite a while: The Art of the Sonnet by Stephen Burt and David Mikics, in which they look at one hundred "exemplary sonnets of the English language (and a few sonnets in translation)" and blog one of them a day. If I were Patrick Stewart I'd be reading them. Be thankful I'm not doing that. I'll stick to the ones in English and in the public domain (ie old). All comments welcome.
"Whoso list to hunt" by Thomas Wyatt
Whoso list to hunt: I know where is an hind,
But, as for me, helas, 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,
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."
There is a plausible autobiographical reading of the sonnet. Wyatt was suspected of being a lover of Anne Boleyn. He seems to have been lucky not to have been executed as a result. In the poem, if we see Boleyn as the beloved, it's clear that the speaker accepts his love is pointless (in vain) and indeed dangerous. Acknowledging his own also-ran status in the first eight lines, the final six sound a warning to others: this woman is "wild for to hold" or as we might say, if we were a 50s film noir, the dame is too hot to handle.
This poem was the Guardian's Poem of the Week in August 2009 and the thoughts of Carol Rumens are well worth reading.
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