Renaissance Poetry

Sir Thomas Wyatt, Henry Howard, Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser

Sir Thomas Wyatt’s ’Who so list to haunt’

(‘translation’ of sonnet 190 of Petrarch’s Canzoniere)

Who so list to hount, I knowe where is an hynde,

But as for me, helas, I may no more:
The vayne travail hath weried me so sore.
I am of theim that farthest commeth behinde;

Yet may I by no meanes my weried mynde

Drawe from the Diere: but as she fleeth afore,
Faynting I folowe. I leve of therefore,
Sins in a nett I seke to hold the wynde.

Who list her hount, I put him owte of dowbte,

As well as I may spend his tyme in vain:
And, graven with Diamonds, in letters plain
There is written her faier neck rounde abowte:

Noli me tangere, for Cesars I ame;

And wylde for to hold, though I seme tame.

FRANCESCO PETRARCH (1304-1374 / Arezzo, Italy)

A pure white hind appeared to me

‘Una candida cerva sopra l'erba'

A pure white hind appeared to me

with two gold horns, on green grass,
between two streams, in a laurel's shade,
at sunrise, in the unripe season.
Her aspect was so sweet and proud
I left all my labour to follow her:
as a miser, in search of treasure,
makes his toil lose its bitterness in delight.
‘Touch me not,' in diamonds and topaz,
was written round about her lovely neck:
‘it pleased my Lord to set me free.'
The sun had already mounted to mid-day,
my eyes were tired with gazing, but not sated,
when I fell into water, and she vanished. (Translated by: A. S. Kline)
 Sir Thomas Wyatt 'They Flee From Me'

They flee from me that sometimes 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.
Henry Howard’s ‘The Soote Season’

The soote season, that bud and blome furth bringes,

With grene hath clad the hill and eke the vale:
The nightingale with fethers new she singes:
The turtle to her make hath tolde her tale:
Somer is come, for euery spray nowe springes,
The hart hath hong his olde hed on the pale:
The buck in brake his winter cote he flinges:
The fishes flote with newe repaired scale:
The adder all her sloughe awaye she slinges:
The swift swalow pursueth the flyes smale:
The busy bee her honye now she minges:
Winter is worne that was the flowers bale:
And thus I see among these pleasant thinges
Eche care decayes, and yet my sorow springes.

Henry Howard’s translation from BOOK II of VIRGIL'S AENEID.

[AENEAS BEGINS HIS TALE]
They whisted1 all, with fixed face attent,
When prince Æneas from the royal seat
Thus gan to speak. O Queen! it is thy will
I should renew a woe cannot be told:
How that the Greeks did spoil, and overthrow
The Phrygian2 wealth, and wailful realm of Troy:
Those ruthful things that I myself beheld;
And whereof no small part fell to my share.
Which to express, who could refrain from tears?
What Myrmidon?3 or yet what Dolopes?4
What stern Ulysses' waged soldier?5
And lo! moist night now from the welkin6 falls;
And stars declining counsel us to rest.
But since so great is thy delight to hear
Of our mishaps, and Troyè's7 last decay;
Though to record the same my mind abhors,
And plaint eschews, yet thus will I begin.
Notes:
1. whisted, became silent; hushed.
2. Phrygian, of the kingdom of Phrygia, located in what is now Turkey.
3. The Myrmidons were an ancient tribe of Greece. They were the soldiers of Achilles.
4. The Dolopes were a tribe in Thessaly, on the outskirts of Greece.
They were soldiers of Neoptolemus, or Pyrrhus, son of Achilles.
5. waged soldier, soldier that gets paid wages, i.e. hired soldier; mercenary.
6. welkin, heavens.
7. As common to the poets of the era, Surrey alternately makes words monosyllabic or
disyllabic in pronunciation, to support the metre. Thus, Troy is monosyllabic above in line 6,
disyllabic here and on many occasions later in the text.
Sir Philip Sidney, Sonnet 1 (Astrophil and Stella)
Sonnet 1 is a Shakespearean sonnet. It has 14 lines and it is written in iambic
pentameter. Sonnet 1 can be divided in an octet and a sestet and it has an
ABAB ABABCDCDEE rhyme scheme.

Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,

That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,—
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others’ leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburned brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting Invention’s stay:
Invention, Nature’s child, fled step-dame Study’s blows,
And others’ feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
Thus great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite:
“Fool,” said my Muse to me, “look in thy heart and write.”

Astrophil and Stella, Sonnet 34

Come, let me write. ‘And to what end?’ To ease
A burdened heart. ‘How can words ease, which are
The glasses of thy daily vexing care?’
Oft cruel fights well pictured forth do please.
‘Art not ashamed to publish thy disease?’
Nay, that may breed my fame, it is so rare.
‘But will not wise men think thy words fond ware?’
Then be they close, and so none shall displease.
‘What idler thing, than speak and not be heard?’
What harder thing than smart and not to speak?
Peace, foolish Wit; with wit my wit is marred.
Thus write I while I doubt to write, and wreak
My harms on ink’s poor loss; perhaps some find
Stella’s great powers, that so confuse my mind.
The Spenserian stanza is a fixed verse form invented by Edmund Spenser for his epic
poem The Faerie Queene (1590–96). Each stanza contains nine lines in total: eight lines
in iambic pentameter followed by a single 'alexandrine' line in iambic hexameter. The rhyme
scheme of these lines is ABABBCBCC.

This example is the first stanza from Spenser's Faerie Queene. The formatting, where in all
lines but the first and last are indented, is the same as in contemporary printed editions.
Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske,
As time her taught, in lowly Shepheards weeds,
Am now enforst a far unfitter taske,
For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds,
And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds;
Whose prayses having slept in silence long,
Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds
To blazon broad emongst her learned throng:
Fierce warres and faithfull loues shall moralize my song.