The long love that in my thought doth harbor, by Thomas Wyatt:
BASIC FACTS:
Title: The long love that in my thought doth harbor.
Author: Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder.
Date of publication: 1557.
Collection: Tottel’s Miscellany. Songes and Sonnettes Written By the Ryght Honorable Lord Henry Horward, Earle of Surrey, and Others.
Poetic genre: Translation of a Petrarchan sonnet, from Italian into English. It is an Italian sonnet since it follows the structure octave (abba abba) + sestet (cdc cdc). The change from a rhyme group to the following one implies a change in the subject matter.
Metric: Decasyllabic lines. Free in accents.
Rhyme: abba abba cdc cde.
FURTHER INFORMATION:
Major Themes:
- Unreturned, non-reciprocal love.
- Individualism: Men can also show their feelings during the Renaissance.
Symbols:
- Love as war.
- Love as hunting.
- Association of love with thought instead of heart. ‘Intellectualisation’ of love.
- Conquering the beloved’s love becomes an ‘enterprise’.
Literary devices:
- Military semantic field : ‘banner’, ‘campeth’, etc.
- Personification of love by the use of the adjective ‘long’ and the verb ‘harbor’.
