The Stoic Lover: Refusing the Script

Wyatt's sonnet is structured as a deliberate rejection of the lover's conventional response to betrayal. Lines 1-8 catalog what other men do: they mourn, wail, call women false, and try to win them back with words. These are the expected moves in courtly love poetry. But Wyatt doesn't perform them. Instead, he announces he will "not wail, lament, not yet be sad"—a flat refusal that reads almost like defiance.

The poem's power lies in what Wyatt doesn't do. He doesn't curse her. He doesn't plead. He doesn't even claim moral high ground. Instead, he attributes her infidelity to her nature: women are inconstant by kind. This isn't a compliment, but it's also not an attack. It's a way of removing the sting by treating her behavior as impersonal—not a rejection of him specifically, but simply how women are. This move allows him to maintain dignity without the emotional performance other poets demand of themselves.

Biographical Context: The Wyatt Difference

CONTEXT Wyatt lived at Henry VIII's court and was imprisoned twice—once for his suspected affair with Anne Boleyn. He knew intimately how quickly favor could vanish. This sonnet may reflect real experience of courtly betrayal, but notice he doesn't write as a victim.

Wyatt was among the first English poets to adapt the Italian sonnet form. What's distinctive here is his refusal of the Petrarchan lover's endless suffering. Petrarch's speaker pines eternally; Wyatt's speaker simply stops. The poem's restraint—its almost cold acceptance—was unusual for its time and marks Wyatt as a poet interested in emotional economy rather than display. He proves his sophistication not through passion but through its deliberate suppression.

Thomas Wyatt

Divers doth use

Conventional complaint

Lines 1-4 describe the standard lover's response to rejection: public mourning. Wyatt is setting up what everyone else does so he can reject it.

Divers doth use, as I have heard and know,

When that to change their ladies do begin,

Conventional complaint

Lines 1-4 describe the standard lover's response to rejection: public mourning. Wyatt is setting up what everyone else does so he can reject it.

To mourn and wail, and never for to lin,

Hoping thereby to pease their painful woe.

And some there be, that when it chanceth so

That women change and hate where love hath been,

They call them false and think with words to win

The hearts of them which otherwhere doth grow.

The turn: 'But as for me'

Line 9 pivots from describing others' behavior to declaring his own refusal. This is the volta of the sonnet—the argument shifts from observation to personal stance.

But as for me, though that by chance indeed

Change hath outworn the favor that I had,

I will not wail, lament, not yet be sad,

Nor call her false that falsely did me feed,

Reframing betrayal

'Falsely did me feed' is active—she fed him false hope. He's not calling her false (which would be the expected insult), but describing her action precisely.

But let it pass, and think it is of kind

Nature over blame

The final couplet doesn't excuse her behavior—it naturalizes it. Women's 'kind' (nature) is to change. This is resignation, not forgiveness, and it removes her from moral judgment.

That often change doth please a woman's mind.

Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation