WYATT AND SURREY AND THE

EARLY ELIZABETHANS
c. 1525-1579

Sir Thomas Wyatt

1503-1542

THE LOVER'S LIFE COMPARED TO THE

ALPS

(From Tottel's Miscellany, 1557)

Like unto these unmeasurable mountains
So is my painful life, the burden of ire;
For high be they, and high is my desire;
And I of tears, and they be full of fountains:
Under craggy rocks they have barren plains; 5
Hard thoughts in me my woful mind doth
tire:

Small fruit and many leaves their tops do attire:

With small effect great trust in me remains: The boisterous winds oft their high boughs do blast;

Hot sighs in me continually be shed:

10

Wild beasts in them, fierce love in me is fed; Unmovable am I, and they steadfast.

Of singing birds they have the tune and note;

And I always plaints passing through my throat.

THE FRAILTY OF BEAUTY

(From Tottel's Miscellany, 1557)

Brittle beauty, that Nature made so frail, Whereof the gift is small, and short the sea

son;

Flowering to-day, tomorrow apt to fail;

Tickle treasure, abhorred of reason:

5

Dangerous to deal with, vain, of no avail; Costly in keeping, past not worth two peason;1

Slipper' in sliding, as is an eel's tail;

10

Hard to obtain, once gotten, not geason:3
Jewel of jeopardy, that peril doth assail;
False and untrue, enticed oft to treason;
Enemy to youth, that most may I bewail;
Ah! bitter sweet, infecting as the poison,
Thou farest as fruit that with the frost is
taken;

To-day ready ripe, tomorrow all to shaken.
Mingles.

1 Sweet.

* Small.

We fled away; our face the blood forsook:
But they with gait direct to Lacon ran.
And first of all each serpent doth enwrap
The bodies small of his two tender sons;
Whose wretched limbs they bit, and fed
thereon.

20

Then raught they him, who had his weapon caught

To rescue them; twice winding him about,
With folded knots and circled tails, his waist:
Their scaled backs did compass twice his neck,
With reared heads aloft and stretched throats.
He with his hands strave to unloose the knots, 26
(Whose sacred fillets all-besprinkled were
With filth of gory blood, and venom rank)
And to the stars such dreadful shout he sent,
Like to the sound the roaring bull forth lows, 30
Which from the altar wounded doth astart,
1 Reached.

Down slid into the ocean flood apart,

The Bear, that in the Irish seas had dipt

His grisly feet, with speed from thence he whipt;

For Thetis, hasting from the Virgin's bed Pursued the Bear, that ere she came was fled. 35

And Phaeton now reaching to his race

With glistering beams, gold streaming where they bent,

Was prest to enter in his resting place.
Erythius that in the cart first went,

Had even now attained his journey's stent:" 40
And fast declining hid away his head,
While Titan couched him in his purple bed.

And pale Cynthéa with her borrowed light,
Beginning to supply her brother's place,
Was past the noonstead six degrees in sight, 45
When sparkling stars amid the heaven's face,
With twinkling light shone on the earth apace,
That while they brought about the nightės
chare,7

The dark had dimmed the day ere I was ware.

50

And sorrowing I to see the summer flowers,
The lively green, the lusty leas forlorne,
The sturdy trees so shattered with the showers,
The fields so fade that flourished so beforne;
It taught me well all earthly things be borne
To die the death, for nought long time may last;
The summer's beauty yields to winter's blast.56

Then looking upward to the heaven's leames,8
With nightės stars thick powdered everywhere,
Which erst so glistened with the golden streams
That cheerfull Phoebus spread down from his
sphere,

Beholding dark oppressing day so near;
The sudden sight reduced to my mind,
The sundry changes that in earth we find.

60

"Whence come I am, the dreary destiny And luckless lot for to bemoan of those, Whom Fortune in this maze of misery,

110

115

Of wretched chance, most woeful mirrours chose That when thou seest how lightly they did lose Their pope, their power, and that they thought most sure,

Thou mayest soon deem no earthly joy may dure."

Whose rueful voice no sooner had out brayed Those woeful words, wherewith she sorrowed

But out, alas, she shrieked and never stayed,
Fell down, and all to-dashed herself for woe.
The cold pale dread my limbs gan overgo,
And so I sorrowed at her sorrows eft,15
That, what with grief and fear, my wits were
reft.

125

I stretched myself, and straight my heart revives,

That dread and dolour erst did so appale;" Like him that with the fervent fever strives,