Stylistic Analysis of Wyatt’s

They Flee from me, That sometime did me

Seek
1. The Poem

You might like to think about the following:

2. What is the poem’s form?

What is the poem’s metre and is it the same throughout the poem?

Are there any words in it which you do not understand, or which are used in
an unusual way?

Do you feel that you understand what it is about?

In Practical Stylistics it helps to confront j~;*r uncertainties rather than to try

to ignore them. They will not go away, and if you do confront them directly it
may lead you to a fuller understanding of a poem’s effects.

3. First Impressions

It often helps when reading a poem to delay reaching conclusions about what
it means or what you think of it. This enables you to build up a response to it
by stages. A few quite humdrum initial observations about form, meaning,
and metre can enable you to make some larger scale conclusions. This page
aims to build up some straightforward observations. Later pages make more
critical use of them.

4. What is the poem’s form?

The poem is in a rhyming stanza ababbcc. This is known as rhyme royal. It is

a form often used by Chaucer, and by Shakespeare in his narrative poem
Lucrece. There are traces of internal or half rhyme in ”danger” and ”range”
which tie the two couplets closely to the initial quatrain. This is only found in
the first stanza Jiowever.

5. Are there any oddities in its metre?

The underlying metrical pattern appears to be a version of an iambic

pentameterfa ten syllable line in which the stress falls on every second
syllable). There are moments which clearly depart from this pattern, however,
and several of these occur at moments of drama: line 15 fit was no dream: I
lay broad waking”) contains only nine syllables, and the last is a feminine, or
unstressed syllable. The caesura seems to take a disproportionate length of
time, as though the speaker of the poem is pausing in amazement. A similar
checking of the flow of the line occurs in line 9. There is clearly a great deal
of flexibility in the treatment of the pentameter. Line 13, in particular, seems
to contain only eight syllables.

6. Are there any words in it which you do not understand, or

which are used in an unusual way?

”Guise” might not be familiar to you: OED gives two definitions which could
fit this context: ’f
1. Manner, method, way; fashion, style. Obs.” fObs.’ means that it is an
obsolete sense) and ’f 6. Sc. A disguise, a mask. Also, a dance or
performance in disguises or masks; a masquerade, a show.” So

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STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF WYATT’S THEY FLEE FROM ME, THAT SOMETIME DID ME SEEK

575

the whole phrase ’After a pleasant guise’ could mean either ’in an agreeable
manner1 or ’after an elaborate entertainment.’

’Stalking’ is interesting since OED shows that it can refer either to the action
of a shy animal (t
1. intr. To walk softly, cautiously, or stealthily...! b. said of an animal. Obs.) or
of & hunter (2. *To go stealthily to, towards (an animal) for the purpose of
killing or capturing it (obs.)). This poses a problem: are the creatures referred
to here the hunted or the hunters?

’Fashion’ presumably means ’manner’; but in a poem which makes so much

of ’thin array”, or fine clothes, there may be a secondary sense of ’modish
dress’.

If you use a dictionary to help you in Practical Stylistics then it is well worth
looking up some words which you think you do understand, just to make sure
that there are no obsolete or secondary senses of which you are not aware. In
this poem there are several words which may not be used in their modern
sense: ’danger1 may mean ’peril’, but there may also be an earlier sense in
play: OED 1. $ a: ’Power of a lord or master, jurisdiction, dominion; power to
dispose of, or to hurt or harm.’ That would mean that the creatures are not
necessarily putting themselves at risk by taking bread trom the speaker, but
that they are putting themselves in his power.

The phrase ’arms long and small’ is odd on first reading, since the modern
senses of long’ and ’small’ are not compatible with each other. Another look
at OED though reveals the obsolete sense of ’small’: ’1. a. Of relatively little
girth or circumference in comparison with length; not thick, stout, or fleshy;
slender, thin.’

In the third stanza a number of abstract nouns seem to be used with a

peculiar emphasis. ’Gentleness’ probably means ’fgood breeding, courtesy,
affability (obs.); kindliness, mildness’ ’Goodness’ - well, we all know what that
means, but what does it mean here? The word seems ilmost to be sarcastic:
’she has graciously permitted me to go’, the poem appears to say, whirh is a
bitter way of describing the end of an affair. ’Newfangleness’ is defined by
the OED as The fact or state of being newfangled or new-fashioned; novelty,
innovation’, but ”it is used by Chaucer to mean ’fickleness’. So the lady has
been given permission to be changeable or even fickle in love. And this is the
result of her ’goodness’ and the speaker’s ’gentleness’. Those apparently
beneficial moral attributes do not appear to be having good consequences for
the speaker. This is something to think about in more detail when we reach
our critical analysis of the poem.

7. Do you feel that you understand what it is about?

The problems with individual words which we have been exploring under the
previous heading prepare for this much broader question. Before we can
answer it we need to be clear what what we mean when we ask what a poem
is ’about’.This is a different sort of question from the previous ones, since a
poem can be ’about’ a lot of things at once. It can be about a love-affair (and
this poem seems to be about something of the kind) and about desire, or lust
or perplexity or all of those things. In this particular poem the two levels of
the question appear to interact with each other: it is not clear exactly what
sort of scene is being described. It is also not clear entirely what the poet
thinks about it. Let us deal first with the easiest of these two questions. What
sort of scene is being described? This is actually a very difficult question to
answer: as in a dream you are not quite sure of who anyone is or exactly
what they are doing. These problems begin in the first line. Who are ’they1 in
the first line? They take bread, like deer or birds, but ’they’ seem also to be
associated with the very specific woman referred to in stanza 2. We should
note that this woman is also referred to only by a pronoun. The poem does
not reveal enough to enable us to be sure oof her identity or
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A HANDBOOK OF STYLE AND STYLISTICS

her precise relation to the speaker, just as it does not reveal enough to allow
us to be sure what ’they’ are in the first line.

One important lesson about Practical Stylistics emerges from these features
of the poem: be content with doubts and uncertainties, since some poems do
not reveal exactly what they are about, and this can be a major part of their
effect. It is a’good idea, however, to attempt to describe the areas of
uncertainty in your responses as precisely as possible.

8. Developing Your Thoughts

So far we have considered technical aspects of the poem. We have noticed

several oddities in its *»>-* , =T1(j some unsual usages of particular words.
We have also noticed that it is very difficult to establish a precise factual
framework within which to locate it.

This is a point to take stock: Practical Stylistics is best performed by stages.

Begin by noticing formal features and words which puzzle you. It is important
not simply to stop there, however. What we need to do now is to think about
unifying our miscellaneous observations into a critical argument about the
poem.

The next discussion is my observation about the poem. You write your own
thoughts and compare with mine. Be prepared to disagree with it, and argue
against it. Test it against the poem and your views of the poem. Practical
Stylistics is a democratic skill: any reader confronted with a poem can put
forward his or her own reading, and has all the information which he or she
needs to defend and develop their argument.

9. Critical Discussion

The poem opens enigmatically by evoking a group of wild creatures. The

pronoun ’they1 does not reveal exactly who or what would ’take bread’ at the
speaker’s hand. They seem to be birds or deer, both of which can be both
carefully looked after by man and hunted. This uncertainty is reinforced later
in the poem. ’Danger1 in line 5 may carry both its modern sense and an
obsolete sense of ’to put yourself in the power of someone’; either way it
hints that the relationship between the creatures and their feeder carries a
hint of threat, and the echo of ’Danger1 in ’range’ and ’change’ does not let
the reader forget about that threat. That the unnamed and unidentifiable
creatures are not just ”walking1 but ’stalking’ creates a real uncertainty
about the balance of power in this stanza: are they ’treading timorously1, like
beasts (OED 1), or proceeding stealthily like a hunter (OED 2). The second
stanza appears to focus in on a more specific scene: the ’she’ of line 12 is
clearly a woman, and the speaker is remembering a time before the creatures
in stanza 1 ceased to trust him. But even here the pronouns lead us
enigmatically forwards. The lady’s clothes (’in thin array1; ’loose gown’) are
described before we are offered a specific ’she’ on which to hang them. The
occasion too is left deliberately blurred: ’after a pleasant guise’ might mean
either ’after some courtly entertainment’ or simply ’in a pleasing manner1.
The poem only looks directly at the scene in the emphatic monosyllables of
’she me caught in her arms long and small’ - and even here the word ’caught’
might have sinister associations with entrapment. Those arms are delicate:
the speaker is also conscious that they could ensnare. The image continues
the hint of threat which is apparent in the first stanza. It also prompts a
major, and amazed, rupture in the expected metrical structure: Therewith all
sweetly did me kiss’ is an octosyllabic line, drawn out to fill the space of the
line by its weight of drama.

The lady’s rhetorical question fDear heart...?’) does not ask for a reply; but as
the poem progresses into the third stanza the question seems to initiate
uncertainty, and uncertainty of an
STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF WYATT’S THEY FLEE FROM ME, THAT SOMETIME DID ME SEEK

577

increasingly radical kind. It is of course paralleled by the concluding indirect

question of the speaker (’I would fain know what she hath deserved’); but his
question combines complete bafflement in the face of her changefulnp~>
<vith a faint undertone of potential violence. It is as though the question is
directed both to the speaker himself and to his audience. It is at once ’how
can I make sense of this?’ and liow might I retaliate?’

That final question is prepared for by the extraordinarily enigmatic usages of

abstract nouns and terms which one would-expect to express simple moral
qualities in the last stanza: ’gentleness’ one might expect to refer to
benevolence or mildness or aristocratic good manners; and yet it is
’gentleness’ that has led to the speaker’s abandonment. The moral virtue
does not seem to be achieving the results which the speaker would wish. This
unease over apparently al^’pie refer^ce points becomes outright bitterness
in ’I have leave to go of her goodness’. ’Goodness’ indeed: there is a heavy
stress on the word which comes close to sarcasm. This growing stress on
moral terminology comes to a head in ’But since that I so kindly am served’.
That line is metrically awkward, and contains only nine syllables (unless the
final ’ed’ is pronounced as a separate syllable, in which case the line ends
with a feminine, unstressed syllable, as though tailing off into perplexity). The
best way to squeeze it out into ten syllables is to stretch and twist the word
’kindly1 in pronunciation as much as the lady seems to have stretched and
deformed its sense. The word can mean ’gently’ or ’according to nature’ or
’like a friend or member of the family’. None of those senses fit comfortably
here. Those old simple terms no longer work: this betrayal is so violent in its
effects that it wr’-^ks havoc with words which one would expect to describe
good attributes. This rough modification of the more or less expected iambic
pattern is also found at the start of the last stanza, which is a nine syllable
line with an unstressed final syllable: the shock of the scene described in the
second stanza forces a breathless delay on the caesura, which comes to
occupy the space of an entire syllable as the speaker pauses to emphasise
the truth of the incredible tale which he is telling. Throughout the poem
metre serves to emphasise emotion: metrical expectations as well as
expectations about the meanings of individual words are pulled out of shape
by the extraordinary scene which the speaker is describing.

What finally is one to make of this poem? It is enigmatic, systematically

enigmatic, almost in a manner that implies the speaker has been so wounded
by the one specific scene he can remember (the woman coming to him and
then leaving him) that he can no longer focus on any specific event. He
cannot rely on words like ’gentleness’ to have their former consoling
meanings: he is left busily seeking for a means of retribution, or a means of
expressing his hurt. The only means at his disposal is to evoke the intensity
of his pain by showing that his moral vocabulary has been left in a state of
collapse by his affair.
9. Clinical Discussion

You might wish to record your notes on this critical discussion:

How does it use the evidence we built up earlier in the class?

How does it go beyond that evidence?

How does it deal with the parts of the poem which are the most difficult to
understand?

Does it go too far beyond that evidence to a point where it engages in

unconvincing speculation?

10. The Answers

Our critical discussion attempts to move beyond a simple line by line analysis
of the stylistic
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A HANDBOOK OF STYLE AND STYLISTICS

effects of the poem towards a coherent reading of the poem. This process
always involves a degree of risk: you might find that one element of the
poem comes to dominate your discussion, as the word ’enigmatic’ does in the
sample discussion which you have just read. But criticism does involve
reaching a decision about a poem, and so entails risky commitment. The
critical discussion makes one large critical gamble: it assumes that the
uncertainties and metrical irregularites in the poem derive from the scene it
describes - that the poem as it were tells about a traumatic event and evokes
its effects by making words crumble around the sneaker. This is the sort of
critical risk which one is invited to take when thinking about a poem without
any external information about it. What difference might it make to our initial
attempts to read this poem if we add in information about who wrote it and
when? Do the areas of uncertainty which we have found in it disappear? Is
the context simply irrelevant? Or might it help us to understand why the
poem might be quite so ’enigmatic’?

These questions are valuable to ask, but none of them is straightforward to

answer. The discipline of practical criticism is founded on the idea that
reading a poem is best done in conditions of clinical anonymity. Is this
actually the case?