They Flee From Me by Thomas Wyatt :: sixteenth-century lyric poem poetry

Thomas Wyatt, They Flee From Me redact of Multiple-choice Questions Analyzing a Poem Sir Thomas Wyatts sixteenth-century lyric They flee from me is an ambiguous poem that pleases at least partly because it provides no final induction about the situation it describes. Yet the poem, while in some reckon indefinite and puzzling, is nevertheless quite specific in its presentation of a situation, particularly in the second stanza, and it treats a recognizable human experience--that of having been forsaken by a lover--in an original and intriguing fashion. They flee from me, that sometime did me seek with bare-ass foot stalking in jay chamber. I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek That right off are wild, and do not remember (5) 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 bath been other than Twenty times better, but once in special, (10) In cut down array after a pleasant guis e * When her loose night-robe from her shoulders did f either, And she me caught in her arms long and small, * Therewithal sweetly did me kiss, And softly said, Dear heart, how corresponding you this? (15) 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. (20) But since that I so kindly am served, I would fain know what she hath deserved. * way or style * slender The image developed in the low gear stanza is especially striking, with its suggestion of once tame and friendly animals who have reverted to rage and will no longer risk the seemingly innocent victorious of bread from the vocalizers hand. This stanza establishes at once the theme of change, a change from a special, privileged condition to one of apparent mistrust or fear, and the whiz of strangeness (no explanation is given for the change) that will continue to trouble the speake r in the third stanza. Strangeness is inherent in the image itself -- with au naturel(p) foot stalking in my chamber - -- and the stanza is filled with pairs of words that reenforce the idea of contrast flee/seek, tame/wild, sometime/now, take buffer/range. Most interestingly, we are never told who they are. Moving from this somewhat disconcerting translation of the speakers present situation, the second stanza abruptly shifts the reader to an earlier moment in the speakers life when Thanked be fortune, it hath been otherwise/Twenty times better.