A head where wisdom mysteries did frame,
Whose hammers beat still in that lively brain,
As on a stithe where that some work of fame
Was daily wrought, to turn to Britain's gain.
A hand that taught what might be said in rhyme;
That reft Chaucer the glory of his wit;
A mark, the which (unperfected for time)
Some may approach, but never none shall hit.
An eye whose judgment none effect could blind,
Friends to allure and foes to reconcile,
Whose piercing look did represent a mind
With virtue fraught reposed void of guile.
A heart where dread was never so imprest
To hide the thought that might the truth advance;
In neither fortune lost, nor yet represt,
To swell in wealth, or yield unto mischance.
A valiant corpse, where force and beauty met,
Happy alas, too happy but for foes,
Lived, and ran the race that nature set
Of manhood's shape, when she the mould did lose.
Thus for our guilt this jewel have we lost;
The earth his bones, the heavens possess his ghost.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES.
Wyatt and Surrey are usually named together as the most illustrious poets of the earlier part of the sixteenth century. J. Churton Collins calls them, not inaptly, "the Dioscuri of the Dawn." "They inaugurated," he says, "that important period in our literature known as the Era of Italian Influence, or that of the Company of Courtly Makers—the period which immediately preceded and ushered in the age of Spenser and Shakespeare." It is to them that we are indebted for the sonnet: they were indeed the founders of our lyrical poetry. Jonson, Herrick, Waller, Cowley, and Suckling found inspiration in their ditties. Surrey's translation of the second and fourth books of Virgil's "Æneid" (1552) is the earliest specimen of blank verse in our language.
Thomas Wyatt was born at Allington Castle in 1503, and in his youth was a prominent and very popular member of the court of Henry VIII. He was knighted in 1536, and in 1537 became high sheriff of Kent. In April of the same year he was sent as ambassador to Spain, and in 1539-40 was with the court of Charles V. in the Low Countries. Returning to England he lived for the next two years in retirement, and died at Sherborne in 1542.