Sir Thomas Wyatt: Love Addiction Whether you live in the twenty-first century or lived the early sixteenth century, the idea of love is the same. Falling in love is easy, while recovering from a broken heart is much more difficult. According to The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Sir Thomas Wyatt was a well-educated courtier and diplomat, spending much of his adult life abroad, until imprisoned for treason. After analyzing Wyatt’s poetic work, knowing his past experiences greatly helps find meaning in his sonnet poems. ‘They Flee From Me” is a masterpiece written by Wyatt that demonstrates his addiction to love with depressed temptation for past lovers.
Within the first four lines there is Having a past memory that is reincarnated to present form in a waken state, is no longer a dream but rather a hallucination. Depression, loneliness, and regret are all characteristics that could cause Wyatt to see something that is truly not there. After line two indicated the narrator is present in a chamber, possibly a jail cell, understanding Wyatt’s past of being imprisoned makes pieces start to come together. The narrator, presumably Sir Thomas Wyatt, find himself in a severe depression by comparing all things that eventually leave him, animal or human, to this past lover he once had. Wyatt has connected every occurrence or interaction with something in his life that moves on and recognizes it as betrayal.
As the last two lines present some difficulty for true understanding of what Wyatt is trying to say, I believe he is bringing irony within his poem by saying his kindness and mild nature can not describe the punishment his past lover deserves. This displays resentment and anger for someone he once majorly desired, but due to betrayal, is now hated in the narrators mind. Remembering the great times are eventually overwritten by the bad, and in Wyatt’s case falling back to reality made him recognize he is still without his past lover. Whether the relationship was pure infatuation or love…the narrator is reminiscing on the good times yet feeling betrayed on the bad time.
