Wyatt's I Find No Peace
I FIND NO PEACE Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) The Text I find no peace, and all my war is done.
I fear and hope. I burn and freeze like ice.
I fly above the wind, yet can I not arise;
And nought I have, and all the world I season.
That loseth nor locketh holdeth me in prison
And holdeth me not--yet can I scape no wise--
Nor letteth me live nor die at my device,
And yet of death it giveth me occasion.
Without eyen I see, and without tongue I plain.
I desire to perish, and yet I ask health.
I love another, and thus I hate myself.
I feed me in sorrow and laugh in all my pain;
Likewise displeaseth me both life and death,
And my delight is causer of this strife. Critical Essay If the modern reader reads few lines from Surrey’s Epitaph on Sir Thomas Wyatt , he/she can easily understand how he appeared before his contemporaries as the first Renaissance gentleman-poet. Surrey writes in the very year of Wyatt’s death that he had a courtier’s eye, a scholar’s tongu...