Description of the restless state of a lover, with suit to his lady to rue on his dying heart

The sun hath twice brought forth his tender green,

Twice clad the earth in lively lustiness ;
Once have the winds the trees despoiled clean,
And once again begins their cruelness ;

Since I have hid under my breast the harm
That never shall recover healthfulness.
The winter's hurt recovers with the warm ;
The parched green restored is with shade ;

What warmth, alas ! may serve for to disarm
The frozen heart, that mine in flame hath made ?
What cold again is able to restore
My fresh green years, that wither thus and fade ?

Alas ! I see nothing hath hurt so sore
But Time, in time, reduceth a return :
In time my harm increaseth more and more,
And seems to have my cure always in scorn.

Strange kinds of death in life that I do try !
At hand, to melt ; far off in flame to burn.
And like as time list to my cure apply,

So doth each place my comfort clean refuse.
All thing alive, that seeth the heavens with eye,
With cloak of night, may cover, and excuse
It self from travail of the day's unrest,
Save I, alas ! against all others use,
That then stir up the torments of my breast ;

And curse each star as causer of my fate.
And when the sun hath eke the dark opprest,
And brought the day, it doth nothing abate
The travails of mine endless smart and pain.
For then, as one that hath the light in hate,
I wish for night, more covertly to plain ;

And me withdraw from every haunted place,
Lest by my chere my chance appear too plain.
And in my mind I measure pace by pace,
To seek the place where I myself had lost,
That day that I was tangled in the lace,
In seeming slack, that knitteth ever most.

But never yet the travail of my thought,
Of better state, could catch a cause to boast.
For if I found, some time that I have sought,
Those stars by whom I trusted of the port,
My sails do fall, and I advance right nought ;
As anchor'd fast my spirits do all resort

To stand agazed, and sink in more and more ¹
The deadly harm which she doth take in sport.
Lo ! if I seek, how I do find my sore !
And if I flee, I carry with me still
The venom'd shaft, which doth his force restore
By haste of flight ; and I may plain my fill

Unto myself, unless this careful song
Print in your heart some parcel of my tene. ²
For I, alas ! in silence all too long,
Of mine old hurt yet feel the wound but green.
Rue on my Life ; or else your cruel wrong
Shall well appear, and by my death be seen.

Henry Howard

¹ To stand at gaze and suck in more and more.
MSS. cited by Dr. Nott.
² i.e. Sorrow.

Love that doth reign and live within my thought

Love that doth reign and live within my thought
And built his seat within my captive breast,
Clad in arms wherein with me he fought,
Oft in my face he doth his banner rest.

But she that taught me love and suffer pain,
My doubtful hope and eke my hot desire
With shamefaced look to shadow and refrain,
Her smiling grace converteth straight to ire.

And coward Love, then, to the heart apace
Taketh his flight, where he doth lurk and 'plain,
His purpose lost, and dare not show his face.

For my lord's guilt thus faultless bide I pain,
Yet from my lord shall not my foot remove,--
Sweet is the death that taketh end by love.

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

Tottel’s Miscellany

The reign of Henry VIII was not, as students of history know, a period of unbroken internal peace. Nevertheless, when the wars of the Roses were over and a feeling of security had been induced by the establishment of a strong dynasty, a social and intellectual life became possible in England which the troubles of the reigns of Henry VIII and his two successors were sufficient to check but not to destroy. More important still, England, having more or less settled her internal troubles by a judicious application of the balancing system, became a power to be reckoned with in European politics. This brought her into touch with the kingdoms of the continent, and so, for the first time in a more than incidental way, submitted her intellectual life to the influences of the renascence. The inspiration of the new poetry, we shall find, was almost entirely foreign. It was upon French, and, especially, upon Italian, models that the courtiers of Henry VIII founded the poems which now began to be written in large numbers. The extent to which the practice of versifying prevailed cannot now be gauged; but modern investigation shows it to have been very wide. To make poems was one of the recognised accomplishments of the knight as conceived in the last phase of chivalry, the days with which we are, for the moment, concerned; and it is not, perhaps, too much to say that every educated man made poems, which, if approved, were copied out by his friends and circulated in manuscript, or included in song-books. It was not, however, till 1557 that some few were, for the first time, put into print by Richard Tottel, in the volume, Songes and Sonettes, written by the ryght honorable Lorde Henry Haward late Earle of Surrey, and other, usually called Tottel's Miscellany, was the first printed anthology of English poetry. It was published by Richard Tottel in 1557, and ran to many editions in the sixteenth century.

It was particularly influential in establishing the sonnet as a short verse form in English. The collection contained many sonnets by Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey. It became a byword; there is a reference to it in The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Other poets included were Nicholas Grimald, Thomas Norton, Lord Vaux, Sir John Cheke, William Gray, and Sir Anthony St. Leger. Some pieces were anonymous or of indeterminate authorship; Chaucer was represented. C. S. Lewis sees the collection as based on a school active from 1530.

The Miscellany has been reprinted numerous times, including a two-volume set by the Harvard Press in the 1920's.