Sir Thomas Wyatt’s Poem They Flee from Me

Sir Thomas Wyatt was a 16th century poet and statesman. Today we would call him a Renaissance man, and did as much pioneering and inventing in English poetics as American renaissance men such as Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Edison did in more mechanical respects. Wyatt delved into erotic subject matter with grace and civility so as to make it socially acceptable to read. His poem They Flee from Me can be explicated as such, especially by looking at the extended metaphor used.

Wyatt was skilled in using metaphors of animals and nature to tone down the true undercurrent of his poems – which were sexual in nature. They Flee from Me is no acceptation to this. The scansion of the poem is irregular iambic pentameter, dipping to nine syllable lines and even tetrameter in line thirteen: “Therewithal sweetly did me kiss,” (13). It consists of twenty-one lines with irregular rhyme (A/B/A/B/B/C/C/D/E/D/F/F/G/H/I/H/I/I/J/J). As is typical with Wyatt, the poem is written with relatively plain language (a kind of “poetry for the everyman”) without any real didactic purpose.

As analysis begins, the first seven lines seem to be some sort of discourse about animals that the speaker once knew. Upon closer reading it becomes apparent what the speaker is truly talking about. The first hint at this is within the second line of the poem, “With naked foot stalking in my chamber” (2) . The key to starting to unlock the metaphor is the words “naked foot”. When thought of in relation to other parts of the poem, its becomes apparent that “naked” does not denote a hoof or foot any animal; it is more likely trying to communicate skin like that of a human foot.

In the remainder of the eight lines (bearing in mind the explication above) the metaphor can be explicated in the same manner:

I have seen them gentle tame and meek
That now are wild and do not remember
That sometime they put themselves in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range
Busily seeking with a continual change. (3-7)

Line three seems to be a sort of wistful remembrance of the speaker, who is remembering those who hand come through his chamber, so nice, sweet and demure. However, this memory is quickly brought back to reality by line four. The speaker tells of how they are now “wild”, or set loose. They indeed do not remember the speaker, and that they once came to him despite any danger. The danger could be allusions to what would be thought of the women that came to him (most likely for romantic encounters). If the women were found out, it would be a blow to their reputation, people would see them as “sinners” and loose women – whores even. The first part of line six could have several explications in light of what explications have been done so far. The first could be that the “bread” to which the speaker refers is money (bread being a slang term for money).

This would lead the critic to think that the speaker was paying these women to come and sleep with him. However, it could also be a more “innocent” reference. This reference could be that the food to which he is referring is more the sexual hunger of women, which the speaker could quell. The second part of line six and the continuation into seven is again a jerk back to the reality of the situation. The speaker is suggesting that these women now wander [out of his reach]. The words “seeking” and “change” in line seven relate in that it can be supposed that these women now look for encounters with other men, constantly changing partners – always wanting something new.

The metaphor appears to be that of women with whom the speaker once had a relationship with, yet are now gone from him, wild and untamed. In the next lines, the speaker relates that not all relationships have been so bad, “Thanked be fortune, it hath been otherwise / Twenty times better; but once in special, / In thine array after a pleasant guise,” (8-10). The speaker relates that there was one very special woman (or relationship) with whom he was very pleased. The word “guise” in line ten offers a bit of foreboding towards the end of the poem. With it’s duel meaning (manner/disguise) the line can read either that she was very pleasant in her manner, or very pleasant in the disguise she “put on” for him.

In lines ten through fifteen, the speaker again lapses into a daydream state as he relates how when he saw this woman naked he faints into her arms. They kissed, and he asks her how she likes “this” (the statement in line fourteen is ambiguous to what “this” refers, it could be said that the speaker is saying this jokingly how he fell into her arms, or it could be a question directed on how she likes the sex). The speaker then lets the reader know that this was indeed no day dream in line fifteen, but indeed reality fore he “lay broad walking” (15).

The remainder of the poem (lines sixteen through twenty-one) is to what the foreboding word “guise” refers to:

But all is turned through my gentleness
Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go of her goodness,
And she also to use new fangledness.
But since that I so kindly am served,
I would fain know what she hath deserved. (16-21)

Lines sixteen and seventeen seem a lamentation of the speaker; that through all his good heartedness the feelings slowly turn into “forsaking”. These lines relate to those directly following in that the speaker suffers from his mistress leaving, as he relates in lines eighteen and nineteen. In line eighteen, the speaker states that he has to let go of this woman’s “goodness”. While it is not said why he has to let her go, it could be that this speaker has some sort of commitment issues. It seems that with the multitudes of women (as he relates in the beginning) that pass through his chamber, he cannot hold on to any of this.

It makes the critic wonder if this is through fault of his own or fault of the women. The speaker seems to defer blame to the women, as proved in line nineteen, where he says that the woman also has to leave and let go. The reason for the woman’s leaving seems to be a bit more concrete than that of the speaker. It says that she has to leave “to use new fangledness” (19). This seems to bring back the explication that these women may indeed be prostitutes. The woman has to leave for new things or other novelties (both of which are possible in context). It would seem that if these women are prostitutes these things would be more clients – other men.

In the final two lines, the speaker wonders aloud to the reader. In line twenty he uses “kindly” sarcastically to emphasize his disgust to the way in which he is “served”. Like guise, the word “served” can be read in different ways. One reading would have “served” a correlation to the pain that he is feeling. He is kindly being served this horrible pain, a pain of this wonderful woman (who was “Twenty times better” than any other) leaving him. The other reading is not dissimilar to the above; it would have “served” in the way this same wonderful woman gave him what he wanted – sex. Given the sexual nature of the poem, this would not necessarily too much to grasp. Given that the explication that the woman is a prostitute as those before (albeit “twenty times better”), the women could be said paid to serve their clients sexually – hence “kindly served”. It would seem the ambiguity of this word was chosen for the same reason that “guise” was chosen before: so that there can be a double reading of the text, a kind of extended pun. The final line renews the bitterness of the reader and relates directly to the first reading of the line above. He wonders that if he is served with all this pain, so easily, what has the woman who gave him all this pain earned herself? He is hoping that she feels the pain as well, due to the separation, however can only wonder since he cannot enquire about her feelings.

Wyatt’s poem They Flee from Me is full of sexual nature and reference, exemplified by use of metaphor. To the casual reader, this poem appears a whimsical remembrance of a gone away woman. The critic reading closely can see the true gravity of the poem. It is a poem about grief and “bad love”. It is neither whimsical or a remembrance. The reader ruminates on this often and it makes it as new as the day it happened. The poem is weighty and heartfelt, by this poor speaker wallowing in the agony of his woman who is now gone. The speaker is white knuckled and gritting his teeth as tear fall onto the page.