A sonnet by Sir Thomas Wyatt

Farewell love and all thy laws forever...
Farewell, love, and all thy laws forever,
Thy baited hooks shall tangle me no more.
Seneca and Plato call me from thy lore
To perfect wealth, my wit for to endeavor.
In blind error when I did persever,
Thy sharp repulse that pricketh aye so sore
Taught me in trifles that I set no store,
But scape forth, since liberty is lever.
Therefore, farewell, go trouble younger hearts,
And in me claim no more authority;
With idle youth go use thy property,
And thereon spend thy many brittle darts.
For hitherto though I have lost my time,
Me list no longer rotten boughs to climb.

Any thoughts?

On the history of the sonnet form

1. Originating in Italy in the 12th and 13th centuries, the sonet has since become the most popular and enduring form of English verse. English poets (Wordsworth, Byron, Shelly, Yeats, Browning) of almost every era have followed and adapted the sonnet to produce some of their best and worst work.

2. Italian sonneteers - Dante and Petrarch. Of the two, Petrarch proved most influential on the sonnet's subsequent history, bequeathing his predominant theme of secular love as well as the form itself to subsequent poets.

3. The first English sonneteer, Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) learned of the form during travels in Spain and Italy. He is more widely known for his other lyrics but wrote 32 sonnets in the form of a Petrarchan sonnet.

4. There has been debate as to whether Wyatt's iambic pentameter was ingeniously varied or simply clumsy. It is helpful to keep in mind when reading Wyatt that he was exploring new literary territory and that the accenting of syllables in English has changed since his time.

5. A friend of Wyatt's, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547) shares credit for introducing the sonnet to English. Surrey's work deviates somewhat more both thematically and structurally from Petrarch's conventions and represents a more complete "taming" of the sonnet into the English language. He introduced what came to be known as the English or Elizabethan sonnet, later known also as the Shakespearan form.