Educated by the learned tutor, John Clerk, Surrey early had a knowledge of Latin, Italian, Spanish, and French. As a boy he was a close friend of the Duke of Richmond, an illegitimate son of Henry VIII, and stayed with him at Windsor Palace. Surrey was one of Henry’s retainers, and led an active life at court, taking part in several naval and military engagements against France. In 1546, he was arrested and charged with treason, probably because either he or his father had too strongly pressed a family claim upon the succession of Henry VIII, who was then in his last illness. In January 1547, he was beheaded on Tower Hill, where a little more than ten years before Sir Thomas More had met a like fate.
The recent reaction against Surrey has been extreme; whereas nineteenth- and early twentieth-century academic taste merely put Wyatt in an inferior position to Surrey, modern taste has almost refused to read Surrey at all. He certainly is not so fine a poet as Wyatt, and the things for which he is “historically important”—the blank verse translation of a part of the Aeneid, the close imitations of Italian and French sonnets—are almost worthless as pieces of art. But here and there one will find startlingly direct and clear lines, and a few of his poems are very fine.
TEXT:
The Poems of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, edited by Frederick Morgan Padelford (1928).
The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings,
With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale;
The nightingale with feathers new she sings;
The turtle to her make hath told her tale.
Summer is come, for every spray now springs:
The hart hath hung his old head on the pale;
The buck in brake his winter coat he flings;
The fishes float with new-repairëd scale;
The adder all her slough away she slings;
The swift swallow pursueth the fliës smale;
The busy bee her honey now she mings;
Winter is worn that was the flowers’ bale.
And thus I see among these pleasant things,
Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs.
WHEN YOUTH HAD LED
When youth had led me half the race
That Cupid’s scourge did make me run,
I lookëd back to meet the place
From whence my weary course begun.
And then I saw how my desire
By ill guiding had let my way:
Whose eyes, too greedy of their hire,
Had lost me many a noble prey.
For when in sighs I spent the day,
And could not cloak my grief by game,
Their boiling smoke did still bewray
The fervent rage of hidden flame.
And when salt tears did bain my breast,
Where Love his pleasant trains had sown,
The bruit thereof my fruit oppressed,
Ere that the blooms were sprung and blown.
And where mine eyes did still pursue
The flying chase that was their quest,
Their greedy looks did oft renew
The hidden wound within my breast.
When every look these cheeks might stain,
From deadly pale to flaming red,
By outward signs appearëd plain
The woe wherewith my heart was fed.
But all too late Love learneth me
To paint all kind of colors new,
To blind their eyes that else should see
My sparkled cheeks with Cupid’s hue.
And now the covert breast I claim
That worships Cupid secretly
And nourisheth his sacred flame
From whence no blazing sparks do fly.
ALAS, SO ALL THINGS NOW
Alas, so all things now do hold their peace,
Heaven and earth disturbëd in no thing:
The beasts, the air, the birds their song do cease;
The nightës chare the stars about doth bring.
Calm is the sea, the waves work less and less.
So am not I, whom love, alas, doth wring,
Bringing before my face the great increase
Of my desires, whereat I weep and sing
In joy and woe, as in a doubtful ease.
For my sweet thoughts sometime do pleasure bring;
But, by and by, the cause of my disease
Gives me a pang that inwardly doth sting,
When that I think what grief it is again
To live and lack the thing should rid my pain.
SO CRUEL PRISON
So cruel prison, how could betide, alas,
As proud Windsor, where I, in lust and joy,
With a king’s son my childish years did pass,
In greater feast than Priam’s sons of Troy,
Where each sweet place returns a taste full sour.
The large green courts, where we were wont to hove,
With eyes cast up unto the maiden’s tower,
And easy sighs such as folk draw in love.
The stately sails, the ladies bright of hue,
The dances short, long tales of great delight,
With words and looks that tigers could but rue,
Where each of us did plead the other’s right.
The palm-play, where, despoilëd for the game,
With dazëd eyes oft we by gleams of love
Have missed the ball, and got sight of our dame,
To bait her eyes which kept the leads above.
The gravelled ground, with sleeves tied on the helm;
On foaming horse, with swords and friendly hearts,
With chere as though the one should overwhelm,
Where we have fought and chasëd oft with darts.
With silver drops the meads yet spread for ruth,
In active games of nimbleness and strength,
Where we did strain, trailëd by swarms of youth,
Our tender limbs, that yet shot up in length.
The secret groves, which oft we made resound
Of pleasant plaint and of our ladies’ praise,
Recording soft what grace each one had found,
What hope of speed, what dread of long delays.
The wild forest, the clothëd holt with green,
With reins availed and swift y-breathëd horse,
With cry of hounds and merry blasts between,
Where we did chase the fearful hart aforce.
The void walls eke, that harbored us each night—
Wherewith, alas, reviveth in my breast
The sweet accord, such sleeps as yet delight,
The pleasant dreams, the quiet bed of rest,
The secret thoughts imparted with such trust,
The wanton talk, the divers change of play;
The friendship sworn, each promise kept so just,
Wherewith we passed the winter night away.
And with this thought the blood forsakes my face,
The tears berain my cheeks of deadly hue:
The which, as soon as sobbing sighs, alas,
Up-suppëd have, thus I my plaint renew:
“O place of bliss! renewer of my woes!
Give me accompt where is my noble fere
Whom in thy walls thou didst each night enclose,
To other lief, but unto me most dear.”
Echo, alas, that doth my sorrow rue,
Returns thereto a hollow sound of plaint.
Thus I, alone, where all my freedom grew,
In prison pine with bondage and restraint:
And with remembrance of the greater grief,
To banish the less, I find my chief relief.
WHEN RAGING LOVE
When raging love with extreme pain
Most cruelly distrains my heart;
When that my tears, as floods of rain,
Bear witness to my woeful smart;
When sighs have wasted so my breath
That I lie at the point of death—
I call to mind the navy great
That the Greeks brought to Troy town,
And how the boisterous winds did beat
Their ships, and rent their sails adown,
Till Agamemnon’s daughter’s blood
Appeased the gods, that them withstood:
And how that in those ten years’ war
Full many a bloody deed was done,
And many a lord, that came full far
There caught his bane, alas, too soon,
And many a good knight overrun,
Before the Greeks had Helen won.
Then think I thus: “Sith such repair,
So long time war of valiant men,
Was all to win a lady fair,
Shall I not learn to suffer then,
And think my life well spent to be,
Serving a worthier wight than she?”
Therefore I never will repent,
But pains, contented, still endure;
For like as when, rough winter spent,
The pleasant spring straight draweth in ure,
So after raging storms of care,
Joyful at length may be my fare.
GIVE PLACE, YE LOVERS
Give place, ye lovers, here before
That spent your boasts and brags in vain;
My lady’s beauty passeth more
The best of yours, I dare well sayen,
Than doth the sun the candle light,
Or brightest day the darkest night.
And thereto hath a troth as just
As had Penelope the fair;
For what she saith, ye may it trust,
As it by writing sealëd were:
And virtues hath she many mo
Than I with pen have skill to show.
I could rehearse, if that I would,
The whole effect of Nature’s plaint
When she had lost the perfect mould,
The like to whom she would not paint:
With wringing hands how she did cry,
And what she said, I know it, I.
I know she swore with raging mind,
Her kingdom only set apart;
There was no loss by law of kind
That could have gone so near her heart.
And this was chiefly all her pain:
She could not make the like again.
Sith Nature thus gave her the praise
To be the chiefest work she wrought,
In faith, methink some better ways
On your behalf might well be sought
Than to compare, as ye have done,
To match the candle with the sun.
THE MEANS TO ATTAIN HAPPY LIFE
Martial, the things that do attain
The happy life be these, I find:
The riches left, not got with pain;
The fruitful ground, the quiet mind;
The equal friend, no grudge, no strife;
No charge of rule nor governance;
Without disease the healthful life;
The household of continuance;
The mean diet, no delicate fare;
True wisdom joined with simpleness;
The night dischargëd of all care,
Where wine the wit may not oppress;
The faithful wife, without debate;
Such sleeps as may beguile the night.
Contented with thine own estate,
Ne wish for death, ne fear his might.
LAID IN MY QUIET BED
Laid in my quiet bed, in study as I were,
I saw within my troubled head a heap of thoughts appear;
And every thought did show so lively in mine eyes,
That now I sighed, and then I smiled, as cause of thought did rise.
I saw the little boy in thought how oft that he
Did wish of God to ’scape the rod, a tall young man to be.
The young man, eke, that feels his bones with pains oppressed,
How he would be a rich old man, to live and lie at rest.
The rich old man that sees his end draw on so sore,
How he would be a boy again, to live so much the more.
Whereat full oft I smiled to see how all these three,
From boy to man, from man to boy, would chop and change degree.
And, musing thus, I think the case is very strange
That man from wealth, to live in woe, doth ever seek to change.
Thus thoughtful as I lay, I saw my withered skin,
How it doth show my dented jaws, the flesh was worn so thin;
And eke my toothless chaps, the gates of my right way
That opes and shuts as I do speak, do thus unto me say:
“Thy white and hoarish hairs, the messengers of age,
That show, like lines of true belief, that this life doth assuage,
Bid thee lay hand, and feel them hanging on thy chin—
The which do write two ages past, the third now coming in.
Hang up, therefore, the bit of thy young wanton time;
And thou that therein beaten art, the happiest life define.”
Whereat I sighed, and said: “Farewell, my wonted joy!
Truss up thy pack, and trudge from me to every little boy,
And tell them thus from me: their time most happy is,
If, to their time, they reason had to know the truth of this.”
soote: sweet, soft.
make: mate.
mings: mingles, mixes.
let: hinder, prevent.
bain: drench.
chare: chariot.
betide: become a possession.
Windsor: the place where, in 1537, Surrey was confined for striking a courtier; he had spent his boyhood years there with his friend, the “king’s son,” the bastard Duke of Richmond.
hove: linger.
palm-play: a game like handball.
chere: care.
fere: companion.
greater grief: Surrey’s good friend, the Duke of Richmond, had died in the summer of 1536.
distrains: oppresses.
ure: use.
chop: trade.