1. Poetry What is poetry?

RICHARD CORY

1. 
   Whenever Richard Cory went own town;
   
2. 
   We people on the pavement looked at him;
   
3. 
   He was a gentleman from sole to crown;
   
4. 
   Clean favored and imperially slim.
   

5. And he was always quietly arrayed;

6. And he was always human when he talked;

7. But still he fluttered pulses when he said;

8.“Good-morning and glittered when he walked.
9.And he was rich –yes, richer than a king –

10.And admirably schooled in every grace;

11. In fine, we thought that he was everything;

12.To make us wish that we were in his place.

14.And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

15.And Richard Cory, one calm summer night;

16.Went home and put a bullet through his head.

1. 
   Notice that imagery works as interplay.
   
2. 
   Here we have a contrast in line 15 and line 16.
   
3. 
   In line 15 we have the image of a calm summer night.
   
4. 
   In line 16 we have the image of Richard Cory putting a bullet through his head.
   
5. 
   Thus, we have a contrast and interplay in the image of the outside being calm, but the reader fills in the image with the inside of Richard Cory not being calm.
   
6. 
   There is also the contrast of the images, which other people have of Richard Cory versus the image we assume he must have had of himself.
   
7. 
   Thus, note that there is an interplay and contrast of perceptions of images.
   
8. 
   This contrast and interplay of images is essential in an understanding and appreciation of this poem.
   

13. 
    What kinds of imagery will the poet try to use?
    

1. 
   Since imagery is a particularly effective way of evoking vivid experience and since it may be used by the poet or convey emotion and suggest ideas as well as to cause a mental
   

2. 
   reproduction of sensations, it is an invaluable resource for the poet.
   
3. 
   In general, he will seek concrete or image –bearing words.
   
4. 
   For instance, some poems are based almost entirely on imagery and upon associations of that imagery.
   
5. 
   In this instance, the images themselves are the “story”.
   

CUTTINGS

1. 
   Sticks – in – a – drowse droop over sugary loam.
   
2. 
   Their intricate stem-fur dries;
   
3. 
   But still the delicate slips keep coaxing up water;
   
4. 
   The small cells bulge;
   

5. 
   One nub of growth.
   
6. 
   Nudges a sand-crumb loose.
   
7. 
   Pokes through a musty sheath.
   
8. 
   It’s pale tendrilous horn.
   

CUTTINGS

9. 
   This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks,
   
10. 
    Cut stems struggling to put down feet,
    
11. 
    What saint strained so much,
    
12. 
    Rose on such looped limbs to a new life?
    

13. 
    I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing,
    
14. 
    In my veins, in my bones I feel it,
    
15. 
    These small waters seeping upward,
    
16. 
    The tight grains parting at last,
    
17. 
    When sprouts break out,
    
18. 
    Slippery as fish,
    
19. 
    I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath what.
    

– Theodore Roethke

12. 
    How must we judge each element of a poem?
    

1. 
   However, in the final evaluation, we cannot evaluate a poem by the amount or quality of imagery alone.
   
2. 
   Sense impression is only one of the elements of experience.
   
3. 
   A poet may attain his ends by other means.
   
4. 
   We must never judge any single element of a poem except in reference to the total intention of that poem.
   
5. 
   We must not judge merely on the basis of our own preference.
   

1. 
   Thermal.
   
2. 
   Kinetic.
   
3. 
   Tactile.
   
4. 
   Interplay of images.
   
5. 
   Concrete imagery.
   
6. 
   Abstract imagery.
   
7. 
   Sensuous Language.
   

Practical Exercise II:

T F 1. It is unimportant to examine the relationship between style and meaning.

______ and ___________ of the poems, which we have studied. Also, we have tried to gain an understanding of how we should _____________ a poem in order to understand and appreciate it.

2. 
   Style in poetry consists of many components. It consists of ________ figurative language, tone, diction as well as rhyme and meter. In this section we will begin our discussion of style by concentrating on the use of _____________.
   

5. The sharpness and ___________ of any image will ordinarily depend on how ___________________ the image is and how effective the _________________ is.

Practical Exercise IV:
Answer the following questions in short complete sentences. Write the answers in your own words.

1. 
   How should we approach the style and use of imagery by a poet?
   

2. 
   What is the general classification for the senses?
   

3. 
   Is it necessary for something to be completely described in order to be a good image? Explain.
   

4. 
   Why will a poet try to use concrete or image-bearing words in preference to abstract or non-image-bearing words?
   

5. 
   What is meant by the statement that there is a “trade-off” for the poet in using imagery?
   

Practical Exercise V:

1. 
   Do not go gentle into that good night,
   
2. 
   Old ago should burn and rave at close of day;
   
3. 
   Rage; rage against the dying of the light.
   

4.Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

5.Because their words had forked no lightening they

6.Do not go gentle into that good night,

8.Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

9.Rage; rage against the dying of the light.

10.Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

11.And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

12.Do not go gentle into that good night.

14.Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

15.Rage; rage against the dying of the light.
16.And you, my father, there on the sad height,

17.Curse; bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

18.Do not go gentle into that good night.
19.Rage; rage against the dying of the light.

Practical Exercise VII:

DRIVES THE FLOWER

Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees,

Is my destroyer.

And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose

My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks

Drives my red blood that dries the mouthing streams.

Turns mine to wax.

And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins

How at the mountain springs the same mouth sucks.
The hand that whirls the water in the pool

Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind

Hauls my shroud sail

And I am dumb to tell the hanging man,

How of my clay is made the hangman’s lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountainhead;

Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood,

Shall calm her sores.

And I am dumb to tell the hanging man,

How of my clay is made the hangman’s lime.

Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood,

Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell the weather’s wind

How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb.

How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

• 
  Dylan Thomas
  

Practical Exercise VIII:

My parents kept me from children who were rough

Who threw words like stones and who wore torn clothes.

Their thighs showed through rage. They ran in the street

And climbed cliffs and stripped by the country streams

I feared more than tigers their muscles like iron

Their jerking hands and their knees tight on my arms.

I feared the salt coarse pointing of these boys

Who copied my lisp behind me on the road.
They were lithe, they sprang out behind hedges

Like dogs to bark at my world. They threw mud

While I Looked the other way, pretending to smile.

I longed to forgive them, but they never smiled.

- Stephen Spender

MOTHER TO SON
Well, son, I’ll tell you

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair

It’s had tacks in it,

And splinters,

And boards torn up,

And places with no carpets on the floor,

But all the time

I’ve been climbin’ on

And reachin ‘ landin’s

And turning corners

And sometimes ging’ on in the dark

Where there ain’t been no light.
So, Boy, don’t you turn back.

Don’t you set down on the steps

‘Cause you find it’s kinder hard.

Don’t you fall now---

For I’ve still goin’, Honey,

I’ve still climbin’

And life for me ain’t been

no crystal stair.

1. 
   In the last section we examined the different types and uses of imagery.
   
2. 
   We examined several poems, and we tried to discover how the poems appealed to our senses by using images.
   
3. 
   We have seen that the use of imagery is an attempt to make us directly experience the image.
   
4. 
   The use of imagery is an attempt to move our emotions and to appeal to our senses.
   
5. 
   Now, however, we will begin to look at how a poet uses comparison and representation to produce an effect.
   
6. 
   That is, we will look at the use of figures.
   

2.What is figurative language?

1. 
   If we are to understand a poem, we need to examine the types of figurative language, which are used.
   
2. 
   We need to understand exactly what a poet means by the figurative language he uses.
   
3. 
   Descriptive imagery works by simple representation of the thing which is described.
   
4. 
   However, we need to see that figurative language is a way of saying one thing but meaning another.
   
5. 
   We need to learn to look for that other meaning.
   

1. 
   Figurative language is not used just in poetry.
   
2. 
   Just as the vocabulary and grammar of poetry come from everyday speech and language, so too does figurative language come from everyday speech and language.
   
3. 
   For instance, suppose you are at a friend’s house and another friend comes over to visit.
   
4. 
   Suppose that it is a very hot day, and the second friend is sweating heavily.
   
5. 
   The first friend might say, “ well you look nice and refreshed.
   
6. 
   The sweat is rolling off of you in buckets; “ It is an oven outside.
   
7. 
   Sit down and take a load off of your feet”.
   
8. 
   The second friends might reply, “ It is an oven outside”
   
9. 
   “I am baked all the way through”
   
10. 
    My throat is dry as a bone.
    
11. 
    You and your two friends have probably all understood each other.
    
12. 
    However, if we look at their conversation literally, they seem to have been speaking nonsense.
    
13. 
    Actually, they have been speaking figuratively.
    
14. 
    They have been saying less than what they mean, the opposite of what they mean, or something other than what they mean.
    
15. 
    They have been using figurative language in their conversation.
    

4. What is a broad definition of “figurative language”?

1. 
   At first thought is might seem crazy to say one thing when we mean another thing.
   
2. 
   However, everyone does it, and they do it for a very good reason.
   
3. 
   We do it in order to be more forceful and vivid in our communication.
   
4. 
   We have learned that we can do this by using figures of speech.
   
5. 
   Also, we can say more by a figuration statement than by a literal statement.
   
6. 
   In a broad definition, a figure of speech is any way of communicating something in other than the literal statement.
   
7. 
   Figures of speech are a way of adding new meaning to our language without adding a lot of new language to the meaning.
   
8. 
   As we have seen, in many ways that is what poetry is all about.
   
9. 
   It is economy of language.
   
10. 
    It is an attempt to make very much communication out of a few well-chosen words, expressions, or images.
    
11. 
    Figurative language, language that cannot be taken literally, is a way of saying one thing and meaning another.
    

4. What forms of figurative language will we examine in the rest of this

section?

1. 
   Many of the figures of speech have names or labels.
   
2. 
   The names identify the kind of figurative language.
   
3. 
   We may find these names useful in our examination of poetry, because the different kinds of figurative language work differently.
   
4. 
   In the remainder of this section, we will look at three of these forms of figurative language.
   
5. 
   We will examine metaphor and simile, personification, and symbol.
   

3.1Figurative Language: Metaphor and Simile:

6. 
   What is a simile?
   

1. 
   Metaphor and simile are both comparisons between two things which are essentially different, but which share common characteristics.
   
2. 
   In the conversation between your friends in paragraph 3, you saw a simile when the second friend said his throat was as “dry as a bone”, and you saw a metaphor when he said, “It is an oven outside”.
   
3. 
   You have also seen a simile in Tennyson’s “The Eagle”.
   
4. 
   In this poem Tennyson says that the eagle “falls like a thunderbolt”.
   
5. 
   Just as throats and bones are unalike, eagles and thunderbolts are two things that are unalike.
   
6. 
   However, we can see that an eagle and a thunderbolt both have a few common characteristics: speed and downward movement.
   
7. 
   This kind of comparison in which words such as: like, as, than similar to, or resembles are used, are usually called similes.
   
8. 
   When we use words like this in an expression, we know that the writer has made a comparison.
   

7. How do we know that a metaphor is a comparison?

1. 
   Suppose for a moment, however, that Tennyson had said, “the eagle is a thunderbolt,”
   
2. 
   This too, is a comparison, which we call a metaphor.
   
3. 
   You may say, “how do we know that it is a comparison”?
   

thunderbolts are not really like one another, really the same thing, so

we know that the expression is not really true.

4. 
   Thus, if a writer says something that is literally not true we know that in order to makes a comparison between eagles and thunderbolts.
   
5. 
   If we think about eagles and thunderbolts, we will again see that they have common characteristics: speed and downward movement.
   
6. 
   The two expressions “the eagle falls like a thunderbolt” and “the eagle is a thunderbolt” express the same idea.
   
7. 
   However, in the second one the writer does not let us know that he makes a comparison.
   
8. 
   He only implies that he is making it.
   
9. 
   That is, the figurative term is substitutes for or identified with the literal term.
   

7. 
   What are the similes and metaphors in the first stanza of this
   

1. 
   Old as a coat on a chair; and his crushed hand,
   
2. 
   As unexpressive as a bird’s face, held
   

3. 
   Out like an offering, symbol of the blind,
   
4. 
   He gropes our noise for charity. You could build
   
5. 
   His long-deserted face up out of sand,
   

6. 
   Shuffling the seconds of a drugged watch, he
   
7. 
   Attends no answer to his rote; for soul’s
   
8. 
   And body’s terrible humility,
   
9. 
   Stripped year by a little barer, wills
   
10. 
    .Nothing: he claims no selfhood in his cry:
    
11. 
    His body is an age that feels.
    

12. 
    As if a mask, a tattered blanket, should
    
13. 
    Live for a little before falling, when
    
14. 
    The body leaves it : so briefly in this dead
    
15. 
    Feathers of rags, and rags of body, and in
    
16. 
    His crumpled mind, the awful and afraid
    
17. 
    Stirs and pretends to be a man.
    
18. 
    Earth’s degradation and the voice of earth;
    
19. 
    Colour of earth and clothed in it, his eyes;
    
20. 
    White pebbles blind with deserts; the long growth.
    
21. 
    Of landscape in his body: as if these
    
22. 
    Or these dead acres horribly gave birth :
    

23. 
    Only a sad and humble motion keeps
    
24. 
    The little space he is, himself: to row
    
25. 
    His mindless caves with ritual hand and lips,
    
26. 
    And wonder dimly that his guilt: with no
    
27. 
    Memory of it now: it was perhaps.
    

Terence Tiller

9. 
   What is personification?
   

1. 
   Another figure of speech similar to the metaphor is personification.
   
2. 
   Personification consists of giving the characteristics of a human being to an animal, an object, or an idea.
   
3. 
   This representation is really another kind of metaphor.
   
4. 
   That is, it is an implied comparison in which the figurative term is always compared to a human being.
   
5. 
   This is often a striking way of presenting an idea.
   

9. 
   Why do some poets use personification?
   

1. 
   Personification attempts to make us provide motivation to objects, ideas, or animals.
   
2. 
   We usually do not think that an object “wants” or “tries” anything.
   
3. 
   Yet, personification uses such verbs and provides this idea of motivation.
   
4. 
   For instance, when a poet ways that the moon “looks” or that the night “cries”, he is using personification.
   
5. 
   Thus, in trying to make their meaning clearer, some poets give their ideas or representations as though they were living people with human characteristics.
   

9. 
   What object, animal, or idea is personified in the following poem?
   

1. 
   Rough wind, that moanest loud
   
2. 
   Grief too sad for song;
   
3. 
   Wild wind, when sullen cloud
   
4. 
   Knells all the night long;
   
5. 
   Sad storm, whose tears are vain,
   
6. 
   Bare woods, whose branches strain,
   
7. 
   Deep caves and dreary main,
   
8. 
   Wail, for the world’s wrong.
   

Shelly
3.3 Figurative Language: Symbol:

10. 
    What is symbolism?
    

1. 
   Another way to say one thing and mean another is described as the use of symbolism.
   
2. 
   A symbol may be roughly defined as something other than what it is.
   
3. 
   At times, when we read a poem, we suddenly realize that what the poet actually wants to present is not what he has been describing.
   
4. 
   That is, there may be a larger or deeper meaning that we are expected to find.
   
5. 
   We often only slowly come to understand that a symbol is being used.
   

10. 
    Which road did the traveler take?
    

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear,

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black,

Oh, I kept the first for another day;

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood and I …..

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference,
Robert Frost

10. 
    What might make us think that Mr. Frost is using a symbol?
    

1. 
   On first reading this poem tells a simple story of a person who is walking in the forest and is forced to decide between two roads.
   
2. 
   He would like to explore both roads, but can only choose one of them.
   
3. 
   He thinks that he will save the other road for another day, but he actually knows that other concerns will begin to take his time and he will probably never come back to the path.
   
4. 
   However, by the end of the poem we begin to think that he is talking about more than just this choice.
   
5. 
   In the last stanza he seems to put a great deal of importance on this one small incident.
   
6. 
   He is using this choice as a larger symbol.
   
7. 
   Thus, we can see that symbols differ in the degree to which the poet makes them explicit.
   

10. 
    Why is the symbol both interesting and difficult?
    

1. 
   The symbol is both the most interesting and the most difficult type of figurative language.
   

2. 
   Both of these factors come from the amount of interpreting-figurative language.
   
3. 
   Every symbol may have different meanings and associations.
   

d. However, the fact that a symbol can be interpreted in so many different ways makes it important for us to be careful.

4. 
   In our interpretation we must stick to the facts within the poem.
   
5. 
   That is, we cannot say that Frost’s poem is about the choice between good and evil, because the facts of the poem do not show this.
   
6. 
   Also, we must be careful not to see symbols everywhere, even through there may not be any.
   
7. 
   To see too many symbols or to see the wrong symbols can only keep us distant from the meaning and experience of the poem.
   

1. 
   In this section we have looked at various types of figurative language.
   
2. 
   We have also seen that the different figures of speech can blend into each other.
   
3. 
   It is sometimes impossible to classify them strictly as either an image, a metaphor, personifications or a symbol.
   
4. 
   Often a particular example may be two or more figures of speech at the same time.
   
5. 
   When a poet writes of “the weakening eye of the day”, there is metaphor and at the same time a personification of day.
   
6. 
   When a poet writes of “the red rose whispers passion” we see a personified rose which “whispers” and is at same time a symbol of passionate love.
   
7. 
   More important than being able to give the literary classification of a poem is the ability to interpret them correctly.
   

********
Practical Exercises

Practical Exercise I
Explain the following words and phrases. Use short complete sentences. Answer according to the usage in the passage. Also, give an example from the poems we have studied.

1. 
   Comparison.
   
2. 
   Representation.
   
3. 
   Figure of speech
   
4. 
   Characteristics
   
5. 
   Metaphor
   
6. 
   Personification
   
7. 
   Symbol
   

Practical Exercise II

Answer each of the following questions from the reading. If the answer is true, put an X through T. If the answer is false, put an X through F.

T F 1. The metaphor is less of a comparison than the simile.

T F 2. Figures of speech help with an economy of language.

T F 3. Personification attempts to compare objects to ideas.

T F 4. Symbolism is less important than metaphor.

T F 5. It is necessary to be able to identify metaphors,

personification and symbolism in order to appreciate

poetry.
Practical Exercise III

From your reading of this lesson, try to provide the words or phrases that best fit the following blank spaces. Synonyms are acceptable.

1. 
   Figurative language is not used just in _____________. Just as the vocabulary and grammar of poetry come from __________________ and ______________. so too does figurative ______________ come from everyday speech and language.
   
2. 
   Figures of speech are a way of adding new ____________ to our language without adding a lot of new ______________ to our ______
   
3. 
   Metaphor and simile are both _______ between two things which are essentially _______________, but which share __________________
   
4. 
   Thus, if a writer says something that is literally _______________ we know hat he is either __________________ to us or that he is trying to use ______________ in a _________________ way.
   

5. 
   A symbol may be roughly defined as _______ other than ______ it is.
   

1. 
   What is the origin of the vocabulary, grammar and figurative language of poetry?
   

2. 
   What is the difference between a metaphor and a simile?
   

3. 
   How is personification similar to a metaphor ?
   

4. 
   Why does a poet use figurative language?
   

5. 
   What is the major problem in interpreting the symbols of a poem?
   

Practical Exercise V :

For example, what common characteristics are there between:

Crushed hand ____________________ bird’s face

“ “ __________________ an offering

Continue with the remaining figures of speech.

Practical exercise VI:
Go back to “Dirge” on page 32. Discuss the personification.

Practical Exercise VII:

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host of golden daffodils :

40

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

And twinkle on the milkey way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Alone the margin of a bay :

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

Out-did the sparking waves in glee.

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company :

I gazed –and gazed- but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought :

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils,

Wordsworth
Practical Exercise VIII :
Re-read the poem “The Road Not Taken” on page 33. Discuss the symbolism in the poem. In your discussion, use the steps you have studied thus far.

A. Statement of the general theme

B. Line –by-line analysis

C. The poet’s purpose / intention

D.The effect of style
Practical Exercise IX :
Discuss the figurative language in this poem.
LITTLE BOXES
Little boxes on the hillside,

Little boxes made of ticky tacky little boxes

Little boxes,

Little boxes all the same.

There’s green one and a pink one and a blue one

And a yellow one,

And they’re all made out of ticky tacky

And they all look just the same.

41

And the people in the houses all went to the University

And there’re doctors and there’re lawyers and there’re

business executives

And they’re all made out of ticky tacky

And they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course

And drink their martini dry

And they all have pretty children and

The children go to school

And the children go to summer camp

And then to the University

Where they all got put in boxes and

They all come out the same.
And the boys go into business and

Marry and raise a family

In boxes, little boxes, little boxes

Blue one and a yellow one

And they’re all made out of ticky tacky

And they all look just the same.

• 
  Malvina Roynolds
  

Around 1525, Wyatt separated from his wife, charging her with adultery; it is also the year from which his interest in Anne Boleyn probably dates.¹ He accompanied Sir Thomas Cheney on a diplomatic mission to France in 1526 and Sir John Russell to Venice and the papal court in Rome in 1527. He was made High Marshal of Calais (1528-1530) and Commissioner of the Peace of Essex in 1532. Also in 1532, Wyatt accompanied King Henry and Anne Boleyn, who was by then the King's mistress, on their visit to Calais. Anne Boleyn married the King in January 1533, and Wyatt served in her coronation in June.

Wyatt was knighted in 1535, but in 1536 he was imprisoned in the Tower for quarreling with the Duke of Suffolk, and possibly also because he was suspected of being one of Anne Boleyn's lovers. During this imprisonment Wyatt witnessed the execution of Anne Boleyn on May 19, 1536 from the Bell Tower, and wrote V. Innocentia Veritas Viat Fides Circumdederunt me inimici mei.  He was released later that year.  Henry, Wyatt's father died in November 1536.

Wyatt was returned to favor and made ambassador to the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, in Spain. He returned to England in June 1539, and later that year was again ambassador to Charles until May 1540. Wyatt's praise of country life, and the cynical comments about foreign courts, in his verse epistle Mine Own John Poins derive from his own experience.

In 1541 Wyatt was charged with treason on a revival of charges originally levelled against him in 1538 by Edmund Bonner, now Bishop of London.   Bonner claimed that while ambassador, Wyatt had been rude about the King's person, and had dealings with Cardinal Pole, a papal legate and Henry's kinsman, with whom Henry was much angered over Pole's siding with papal authority in the matter of Henry's divorce proceedings from Katharine of Aragón. Wyatt was again confined to the Tower, where he wrote an impassioned 'Defence'. He received a royal pardon, perhaps at the request of then queen, Catharine Howard, and was fully restored to favor in 1542. Wyatt was given various royal offices after his pardon, but he became ill after welcoming Charles V's envoy at Falmouth and died at Sherborne on 11 October 1542.

None of Wyatt's poems had been published in his lifetime, with the exception of a few poems in a miscellany entitled The Court of Venus. His first published work was Certain Psalms (1549), metrical translations of the penitential psalms. It wasn't until 1557, 15 years after Wyatt's death, that a number of his poetry appeared alongside the poetry of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey in printer Richard Tottel's Songs and Sonnets written by the Right Honorable Lord Henry Howard late Earl of Surrey and other. Until modern times it was called simply Songs and Sonnets, but now it is generally known as Tottel's Miscellany. The rest of Wyatt's poetry, lyrics, and satires remained in manuscript until the 19th and 20th centuries "rediscovered" them.

Wyatt, along with Surrey, was the first to introduce the sonnet into English, with its characteristic final rhyming couplet. He wrote extraordinarily accomplished imitations of Petrarch's sonnets, including 'I find no peace' ('Pace non trovo') and 'Whoso List to Hunt'—the latter, quite different in tone from Petrarch's 'Una candida cerva', has often been seen to refer to Anne Boleyn as the deer with a jewelled collar. Wyatt was also adept at other new forms in English, such as the terza rima and the rondaeu.  Wyatt and Surrey often share the title "father of the English sonnet."
Whoso list to hunt ……………

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,

But as for me – alas, I may no more.

The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,

I am of them that farthest cometh behind.

Yet may I, by no means, my wearied mind

Draw from the dear; but as she fleeth afore

Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore

Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.

Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,

AS well as I, may spend his time in vain.

And graven with diamonds in letters plain

There is written her fair neck round about;

Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am,

And wild for to hold, though I seem tame

My galley chargèd with forgetfulness 

Since faith is dead,

And truth a way

From you is fled,

With doubleness?

Nay, Nay, mistress!
I promised you,

And you promised me,

To be as true

As I would be.

But since I see

Your double heart,

Farewell my part!
Though for to take

It is not my mind

But to forsake.

(I am not blind),

And as I find

So will I trust.

Farewell, unjust!
But you said

That I always

Should be obeyed,

And thus betrayed

Or that I wist?

Farewell, unkist!

songs and Sonnets, Tottel, 1557.

The writer who exerted the greatest influence over sixteenth-century English poetry was a fourteenth-century Italian, Francesco Petrarca—usually known in English as Francis Petrarch. The first major English poet to translate Petrarch's Rime sparse (Scattered Rhymes) was Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder, followed by his younger contemporary Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. Wyatt's sonnet, "The long love that in my thought doth harbor" (1.527) and Surrey's "Love, that doth reign and live within my thought" (1.571) are both based on the same Petrarchan original.

A comparison between these two sonnets reveals much about the differences between Wyatt and Surrey as English poets, and also much about the essentials of Petrarchism. Wyatt, in his knotty and vigorous style, and Surrey, with his smoother and more regular verses, portray the lover as the victim of both intemperate Love and an ideal but cruelly indifferent mistress. The lover is exalted and suffers by turns, is tossed between hope and despair. (In Wyatt's work as a whole, despair and bitterness tend to predominate, while in later English sonnets, as in Petrarch, the emphasis is on the hope for transcendence.)

In the works of some of Petrarch's Renaissance imitators, such as Sir Philip Sidney, the idealization of woman is taken as far as it can go, to the point that woman becomes the embodiment of virtue and intellectual beauty. Even when a sonnet sequence is addressed to a real woman, as Sidney's Astrophil and Stella is to his cousin Penelope Devereaux Rich, she is almost always given the same attributes as every other ethereal sonnet mistress. Sidney and his fellow Petrarchan sonneteers play more or less seriously with the notion, derived from Plato, that physical beauty, which we experience through the senses, is only a limited manifestation of a higher spiritual or divine beauty, which exists in the soul and which we experience in the mind. This idea is derived not only from Petrarch but from Castiglione's The Courtier (1.578–93), an enormously influential Italian work, translated into English by Sir Thomas Hoby. According to the theory of the "Ladder of Love," expounded in the last book of The Courtier, a man's falling in love with a woman through the senses ought to be a step on a stair ascending to the higher spiritual love, which no longer seeks sexual gratification.

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

He was born in Hunsdon, Hertfordshire, England, the eldest son of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, and his second wife, Lady Elizabeth Stafford (daughter of Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham), so he was descended from kings on both sides of his family tree. He was reared at Windsor with Henry VIII's illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy Duke of Richmond, and they became close friends and, later, brothers-in-law. He became Earl of Surrey in 1524 when his grandfather died and his father became Duke of Norfolk.

In 1532 he accompanied his first cousin Anne Boleyn, the King, and the Duke of Richmond to France, staying there for more than a year as a member of the entourage of Francis I of France. In 1536 his first son, Thomas (later 4th Duke of Norfolk), was born, Anne Boleyn was executed on charges of adultery and treason, and Henry Fitzroy died at the age of 17 and was buried at one of the Howard homes, Thetford Abbey. That was also the year Henry — who took after his father and grandfather in military prowess — served with his father against the Pilgrimage of Grace rebellion protesting the dissolution of the monasteries

Literary activity and legacy

He and his friend Sir Thomas Wyatt were the first English poets to write in the sonnet form that Shakespeare later used, and Henry was the first English poet to publish blank verse in his translation of the second and fourth books of Virgil's Aeneid. Together, Wyatt and Surrey, due to their excellent translations of Petrarch's sonnets, are known as "Fathers of the English Sonnet." While Wyatt introduced the sonnet into English, it was Surrey who gave them the rhyming meter and the division into quatrains that now characterizes the sonnets variously named English, Elizabethan or Shakespearean sonnets.[