Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard (referred to in the reading and in the blog as Surrey) were two very similar writers. They were close friends and lived working under the infamous Henry VIII. Both were imprisoned multiple times by Henry and in some cases got each other out. When looking at their writing, there is a similar style, maybe because they wrote in the same climate and in the same time period. But if your focus is put on one specific poem by each, you can see that there must be something more going on than just writing in the same time and place.
When looking at Wyatt’s poem “The long love that in my thought doth harbor,” and comparing it to Surrey’s “Love, that doth reign and live within my thought,” you notice right away the similarities in the titles. If the poems are taken line by line, only a few differences remain to be seen. Beginning with Wyatt’s and Surrey’s first four lines, line one begins by speaking of the love that lies within each narrators thoughts. In line two both narrators are speaking of the simple thought of love, which is personified into “he,” and moving from a thought to a feeling in the narrators heart. Where, in the third and fourth line in both poems, “he” is clad in armor and is holding a banner. At this point the love as been symbolized to knight or warrior, and the “banner” is representing of the now thoughts of constant love the narrator’s heart is showing him.
Moving on to lines five to eight in both poems, Wyatt and Surrey both speak of how “she” teaches the narrator how to both love and suffer. “She that learneth me to love and suffer” (Wyatt, 5). Compared to Surreys, “But she that taught me love and suffer pain” (5). Line six in both speaks of the narrator’s carless and doubtful love and lust, moving onto line seven, speaking of modest looks towards “her.” Here, there is the slightest difference in lines, as Surrey’s poem takes a turn for the brighter in line eight: “Her smiling grace convereteth straight to ire.” While in Wyatt’s poem his line eight speaks “his hardiness taketh displeasure.” These difference in lines shows that these two narrators and beginning to have different views on the situation, Wyatt’s poem taking a darker side.
The poems sync up again beginning in line nine, where the narrators are speaking of fleeing cowardly to the heart, followed by line ten which continues the running and hiding, but a slight variance changes the mood yet again. Wyatt’s poem speaks of “pain and cry,” when fleeing to hide, while Surrey’s narrator merely “plain(s)” or complains. Yet both narrators end up losing their way by line eleven. In the last few lines, the narrators of both poems speak of leaving their “lord” and “master.” Wyatt uses master while Surrey uses the word lord, both speaking in lines twelve to fourteen of leaving this person. Surrey’s use of lord may be a religious reference, being backed by the fact that his poem is the lighter of the two, and Wyatt’s poem seems to be coming from a darker side.
