Mobile Photography – Saturday Poetry – ‘They Flew From Me’ by Sir Thomas Wyatt
I am introducing a new section, simply titled, Saturday Poetry. Each Saturday I will publish a poem and I will also try to link a mobile photography image, that has been uploaded to our Instagram hashtag #theappwhisperer during the week.
Today, I am publising ‘They Flew From Me’ by Sir Thomas Wyatt. The story of love’s betrayal is obliquely told, charged with pain, yet it speaks straight to us across 500 years. There is a mystery here too. Is Anne Boleyn the woman in the loose gown, who catches the poet in her arms “long and small”? Thomas Wyatt was imprisoned in the Tower for alleged adultery with her, and it is thought that from his window he witnessed her execution. The poem is written in rhyme royal, which may be a clue in itself …
Source: The Poetry Foundation
I have matched @angie.lambert – Angie Lambert’s image with this poem. You can follow her on Instagram here
To view the others we have published in this section, go here.
They flee from me that sometime 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.