Selected Poems

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) was born at Allington Castle in Kent. He studied at St John's College, Cambridge, and served King Henry VIII in various capacities both at home and abroad. He was knighted in 1535, but was imprisoned in the Tower a year later following a quarrel with the Duke of Suffolk, but also perhaps because of suspicion that he had been the lover of Anne Boleyn-a woman he had known for many years and with whom he had been linked at one time. He was released the same year, but was to fall afoul of authority on at least two further occasions, only to be pardoned. He is remembered today as one of the most important poets in the English language, and as the man who brought the sonnet into English, with spectacular imitations and re-creations of Petrarch. His work is broader than that, however, and he showed himself to be a fine elegist and satirist as well as a lyric poet of the very first order.