Poet’s Corner: The Sonnet, Wyatt

10 January 2026
Poet’s Corner

(31 January 2014) Today we turn our attention to the sonnet, a short, rigid form, 14 lines long (although Shakespeare did make some longer), and in one of two forms: the Italian, or Petrarchan (he invented the form in Italian), and the English, or Shakespearean. The Italian has the following rhyme scheme: abbaabbacdecde, although the final six lines, the “sestet”, can vary from this form, as we will see in the following sonnet from Sir Thomas Wyatt:

Whoso List to Hunt
Whoso list [cares] to hunt, I know where there is an hind [deer],
But as for me, alas, I may no more.
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore
I am of them that farthest cometh behind.
Yet may I, by no means, my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore,
Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,
Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.

Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I, may spend his time in vain.
And graven with diamonds in letters plain
There is written, her fair neck round about,
“Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.”

I divided this sonnet deliberately into an octave (8 line stanza) and a sestet (6 line) to draw attention to the structure of the Italian form: put simply, in this form, the poet has 8 lines (the octave) to introduce the ‘problem’, and 6 lines (the sestet) to ‘resolve’ the problem. In this particular sonnet, using the same hunting conceit (extended metaphor), the poet’s problem is that he can no longer keep up with the younger ‘hunters’ of this particular deer–Ann Boleyn–although he cannot escape from the desire for this deer (pun intended), which is, for him, like trying to catch the wind with a net. In the sestet, the poet speaks directly to those younger hunters, who can keep up with this deer, telling them that their hunt is in vain, since this deer belongs to ‘Caesar’–Henry VIII, who has written on her collar, noli me tangere, ‘do not touch me’ for I belong to someone else–a typical single man’s sentiment, looking with desire on that woman who has been spoken for by someone who has first claim, often because he is ‘stronger’ than all others, and so merits this particular woman, even though he might not have actually spoke for her! Notice that this sestet ‘resolves’ the problem, stating that this particular deer is too wild for any of us, including, as history shows us, King Henry VIII, who fails to keep her his own (she was notorious for her affairs), and solves the problem for all, sending her to the Headsman’s block.

The rhyme scheme of this sonnet follows the Italian form, the octave rhymed abbaabba; the sestet follows one of the variations, rhymed cddcdd. Notice also that this sonnet uses iambic pentameter, “Marlowe’s mighty line,” which mimics the patterns of English speech. By contrast, in Italian Petrarch used an octameter, an 8 foot line, or sometimes even a 12 foot line, which works well in Italian, but sounds terrible in English: it becomes a kind of ‘sing-song’ sound that puts the English reader to sleep for its monotonous monotone (alliteration intended)! Think of Dr. Seuss’s “The Cat in the Hat,” which uses pairs of four foot lines (tetrameter); tetrameter is most often used in lyrics & songs.

In the next Poet’s Corner, we will look at the English form, used almost exclusively by Shakespeare, although Sir Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlowe, and Edmund Spencer also used the English form, but no other poets in literary history even attempt to use this form, for reasons we will explain on the next Poet’s Corner. If the reader has any interest in my poetry, find them here.