Wyatt's predeliction for this sort of sonnet no explanation is re-
quired why he chose it. ¹

The longe love that in my thought doeth harbar:
And in myn hert doeth kepe his residence:
Into my face preseth with bolde pretence;
And therein campeth spreding his baner.

She that me lerneth to love and suffre;
And willes that my trust and lustes negligence
Be rayned by reason, shame, and reverence;
With his hardines taketh displeasur.

Where with all unto the hertes forrest he fleith:
Leaving his enterprise with payn and cry:
And ther him hideth and not appereth.

What may I do when my maister fereth?
But in the feld with him to lyve and dye?
For goode is the liff, ending faithfully.

Wyatt here has succeeded in giving an almost literal translation,
at the same time preserving the form of the Italian sonnet, with
the exception of the ending in a couplet. It is unnecessary again
to stress the amount of verbal ingenuity such a performance re-
quires. Also it must be granted that in the accomplishment of
this feat he has sacrificed whatever poetic value the original may
have. Nor is the scansion without difficulties. If the first line
be read as a normal pentameter,

The lónge love thát in mý thought doéth harbár,

every stress falls upon a weak syllable. But Wyatt, following the
Medieval Latin tradition, composed by ear. Thus there is a syl-
labic value given to the probably unsounded final e and a dactyl
is substituted for a trochee. The line then reads

The lónge lóve // thát in my thoúght doéth harbár.

But to shift the accent to so great an extent is not freedom but
license, and presupposes the accompaniment of music. The ex-
planation is that the language was still in so unsettled a condition
that the Romance accent upon the second syllable, where modern
English accents the first, was allowable. Consequently he ac-

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