a painting, instead of the lively lute in music. Overall,
this is a dark and gloomy work, relating the death of
love, love poetry, and artistry. Ironically, through the
poem’s initial line calls for the lute to awake, the fi nal
result is utter stillness.
See also PERSONIFICATION.
FURTHER READING
Jentoft, Clyde W. Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl
of Surrey: A Reference Guide. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1980.
Thomson, Patricia. Sir Thomas Wyatt and His Background.
Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1964.
“MY RADCLIFFE” HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF
SURREY (ca. 1544) Presumably written to the poet’s
fi rst cousin, the 18-year-old Thomas Radcliffe, whose
brother had recently died under HENRY HOWARD, EARL
OF SURREY’s command fi ghting in Scotland, “My Rad-
cliffe” cautions the youth on the need for self-control
in the face of violence, a subject with which Surrey was
intimately acquainted. Both Surrey’s military career
and his social interactions demonstrate that he fre-
quently found himself caught up in the intrigues of the
Tudor court.
The poem, published in TOTTEL’S MISCELLANY in
1557, is an adaptation of an Italian STRAMBOTTO.
While the strambotto form is usually elegiac in nature
and consists of eight lines with a rhyme scheme of
abababcc, Surrey’s poem is admonitory and relies on a
six-line structure with a rhyme scheme of ababcc. The
verse is in iambic pentameter. As indicated by its sub-
heading when published by Tottel, the poem’s moral
is an “Exhortacion to learne by others trouble.” Sur-
rey warns that if his advice is ignored, the nameless
offense Ratcliffe has committed can lead to the calling
down of unheralded “plages” (l. 4). Tread carefully,
writes the poet, some 10 years older than his
addressee. Though it is pleasant to think that a pun-
ished man can once again become whole with the
passage of time, that he may “recure” (l. 5), it is more
realistic that such an offender must come to under-
stand that the effects of these wrongs can last forever.
The poem’s fi nal COUPLET contrasts Solomon’s wis-
dom, from Ecclesiasticus 27:21, with that of Surrey’s
friend, SIR THOMAS WYATT. Wyatt had apparently
been writing about his own imprisonment by Henry
VIII, and the very use of such a juxtaposition between
the holy text and Surrey’s contemporary demonstrates
the high regard Surrey clearly felt for Wyatt as both a
writer and a thinker.
See also COURT CULTURE.
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“MY SWEETEST LESBIA” THOMAS CAM-
PION (1601) Published as the fi rst AYRE in THOMAS
CAMPION’s A BOOKE OF AYRES, for which he composed
the music as well as the lyrics, this is a translation of
Catullus’s famous poem Vivamus, mea Lesbia. It devel-
ops the original’s CARPE DIEM (seize the day) theme
into an assertion of the triumph of love over death.
The fi rst STANZA endeavors to persuade Lesbia to give
in to the poet’s sexual advances by highlighting the
comparative shortness and insignifi cance of human
existence. This is emphasized by the comparison of
the “little light” of human life (l. 5) with the rising
and setting of “heav’ns great lampes”—the sun and
stars (l. 3). The CAESURA in line 3 also gives a sense of
fi nality and importance to the command “Let us not
way [weigh] them.”
The second stanza develops the argument further by
questioning the principle of militaristic honor, expos-
ing it as a shortsighted “wast” of life. In contrast, the
poet playfully invokes the metaphorical “wars” of love,
an image that is also sexually suggestive in its proposal
that only an “alar’me... from the campe of love”
should disturb “peaceful sleepes” (ll. 9–10).
The third stanza continues this opposition to tradi-
tional heroism, imagining the poet’s own funeral as a
time of celebration and affi rmation, rather than mourn-
ing and misery. The reference to “timely death” (l. 13)
suggests that the poet accepts the inevitability of death,
and that fate must be allowed to take its course. This
continues the idea that the poet will not hasten death“MY SWEETEST LESBIA” 285