Your Mission:
1.
2.
3.
4.
12 A.P. ~ Mrs. Todd
Read this poem.
Read it again (and again? and again?).
Annotate it. (Mark it up!) Also write down any questions you have.
Be prepared to discuss it analytically.
"Whoso List To Hunt"
By Sir Thomas Wyatt1 (1503-1542)
Whoso list2 to hunt, I know where is an hind3,
But as for me, hélas4, 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,
Sithens5 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 tangere6, for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.
1
Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503 - 1542) introduced the Italian sonnet form (established by Petrarch) to England.
Writing sonnet series became vogue during the Renaissance. Shakespeare wrote his sonnet series at the end
of this period.
2
Whoso list: Whoever wishes
3
hind: female deer
4
hélas: alas
5
Sithens: since
6
Noli me tangere: “Do not touch me” in Latin
Please read and label any rhyme schemes you find.
Sonnet 131
by Petrarch
Translated by David Young
I'd sing of Love in such a novel fashion
that from her cruel side I would draw by force
a thousand sighs a day, kindling again
in her cold mind a thousand high desires;
I'd see her lovely face transform quite often
her eyes grow wet and more compassionate,
like one who feels regret, when it's too late,
for causing someone's suffering by mistake;
And I'd see scarlet roses in the snows,
tossed by the breeze, discover ivory
that turns to marble those who see it near them;
All this I'd do because I do not mind
my discontentment in this one short life,
but glory rather in my later fame.
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
SONNET 18
by Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
~ e.e. cummings