of offering a poem with three quatrains and fi nal COU-
PLET, he retains the ITALIAN (PETRARCHAN) SONNET model
that SIR THOMAS WYATT had popularized in England,
providing an OCTAVE, a VOLTA, and a SESTET. Surrey’s
second major innovation in the history of the sonnet,
rather than simply structural, hinges on the subject
matter he selects for this poem. Contrary to the poetic
displays of VIRGIL, Dante, PETRARCH, GEOFFREY CHAU-
CER, and Wyatt, who generally wrote about unattain-
able women, Surrey here laments the loss of a man.
The poem itself serves as a meditation on this loss
and demonstrates the speaker’s wrestling with resul-
tant suicidal impulses. Its fi rst image is that of a “rest-
less” (l. 2) head being held up by a hand—and, by
extension, by the walls themselves—that enables the
speaker to survey the unfolding of the spring season in
a determinedly realistic setting: Blossoms fl ourish, the
grass turns green again, “wedded” (l. 5) birds frolic.
The CAESURA in line 6, the full pause midway through
the line, compares this vitality with the speaker’s rev-
erie over a former companion—the “jolly woes” and
the “hateless short debate” (l. 7) they shared, and the
“rakehell [unconsidered] life” (l. 8) that belongs to the
ease of love. But with those thoughts comes debilitat-
ing nostalgia; with the word Wherewith, the fi rst of line
7, Surrey offers his volta, after which the speaker is
overcome by a “heavy charge of care [sorrow] / Heaped
in [his] breast” (ll. 9–10), a sorrow that forces itself
from him in the form of “smoky sighs” (l. 11) that bil-
low in the air. Such sighs cloud his eyes, distilling tears
that, falling, startle into springs beneath him, and the
poem concludes with the speaker “half bent” (l. 14).
FURTHER READING
Jones, Emrys, ed. Henry Howard Earl of Surrey: Poems.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970.
Sessions, William A. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. Boston:
Twayne Publishers, 1986.
———. Henry Howard, the Poet Earl of Surrey: A Life.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
David Houston Wood
WHITNEY, ISABELLA (fl. 1567–1573) Though
Isabella Whitney is considered the fi rst professional
female poet in England, very little is known of her life.
Her brother, Geoffrey Whitney, was a well-known
EMBLEM author who lived in London, and she probably
had at least three other siblings. She was probably born
in Cheshire in the 1540s and may have traveled to
London to work as a servant for an aristocratic family.
Whitney was a pioneer in many respects: She was a
lower-class woman who published secular verses
addressing issues of gender, sexuality, and women’s
liberation. The London publisher Richard Jones printed
her set of verse epistles, The Copy of a Letter, Lately
Written in Meter by a Young Gentlewoman: To Her Uncon-
stant Lover (1567), as well as A Sweet Nosegay or Pleas-
ant Posy: Containing a Hundred and Ten Philosophical
Flowers (1573).
See also “ADMONITION, BY THE AUTHOR,” THE; “I. W.
TO HER UNCONSTANT LOVER”; “WILL AND TESTAMENT”;
TUDOR WOMEN POETS.
FURTHER READING
Ellinghausen, Laurie. “Literary Property and the Single
Woman in Isabella Whitney’s A Sweet Nosegay.” SEL,
1500–1900 45, no. 1 (2005): 1–22.
Marquis, Paul A. “Oppositional Ideologies of Gender in
Isabella Whitney’s Copy of a Letter.” Modern Language
Review 90, no. 2 (1995): 314–324.
Wall, Wendy. “Isabella Whitney and the Female Legacy.”
ELH 58, no. 1 (1991): 35–62.WHOLE BOOK OF PSALMS COLLECTED
INTO ENGLISH METER, THE (“STERN-
HOLD AND HOPKINS”) (1562) The Whole
Book of Psalms Collected into English Meter went through
more than 500 editions by 1700. Sometimes called
“Sternhold and Hopkins” after its fi rst two contribu-
tors, Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins, The Whole
Book contains poems by at least seven others. Its main
contents are the 150 biblical Psalms in English verse
with tunes for singing, but also included are English
versions of hymns and verse paraphrases of the Ten
Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer. Most of the
poetry is in QUATRAINS of alternating eight- and six-syl-
lable lines known as BALLAD meter or, when referring to
hymns, common meter.
ROBERT CROWLEY was the fi rst to translate the entire
Book of Psalms, but The Whole Book of Psalms’ longevity
demonstrates its adaptability. When fi rst published, the464 WHITNEY, ISABELLA