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

Thomas Wyatt, They Flee From Me Set of Multiple-choice Questions Analyzing a Poem Sir Thomas Wyatts sixteenth-century lyric They flee from me is an enigmatic poem that pleases at least partly because it provides no final certainty about the post it describes. Yet the poem, while in some respects indefinite and puzzling, is even so quite specific in its presentation of a situation, particularly in the bet on stanza, and it treats a recognizable human experience--that of having been forsaken by a lover--in an superior and intriguing fashion. They flee from me, that sometime did me seek with naked foot straw in jay chamber. I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek That now be wild, and do not remember (5) That sometime they put themself in danger To back out bread at my hand and now they range, Busily seeking with a continual change. Thanked be fortune it bath been otherwise Twenty times better, but once in special, (10) In thin array by and by a pleasant guise * When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall, And she me caught in her arm long and small, * Therewithal sweetly did me kiss, And softly said, Dear heart, how like you this? (15) It was no ideate I lay broad waking. But all is turned natural my gentleness Into a strange fashion of forsaking, And I have cede to go of her goodness, And she also to use newfangleness. (20) But since that I so hearty am served, I would fain know what she hath deserved. *manner or elbow room * slender The image developed in the first stanza is especially striking, with its shadow of once tame and friendly animals who have reverted to wildness and will no longer risk the seemingly innocent taking of bread from the speakers hand. This stanza establishes at once the theme of change, a change from a special, privileged terminal figure to one of apparent mistrust or fear, and the sense of strangeness (no news report is given for the change) that will continue to trouble the speaker in the terzetto stanza. Strang eness is inherent in the image itself -- with naked foot still hunt in my chamber - -- and the stanza is filled with pairs of words that reinforce the idea of stemma flee/seek, tame/wild, sometime/now, take break/range. Most interestingly, we are never told who they are. Moving from this somewhat disconcerting description 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.