Wyatt - ‘My Galley, charged with forgetfulness’

Right from the title the reader may be curious to find out why the sonneteer speaks about a galley and, above all, why the galley is charged with forgetfulness. The galley reminds to movement and the association with forgetfulness may signify that something drives the galley to forgetfulness; so the reader may be interested in understanding what is this ‘something’. Looking at the structure of the sonnet the intelligent reader can recognize the Petrarchan structure: two quatrains and two tercets, indeed this sonnet was originally written by Francesco Petrarca (‘passa la nave mia colma d’oblio’) and Sir Thomas Wyatt translated it. Bothe the sonneteers use a lexic connected with torment: ‘sharp seas’, ‘winter nights’, ‘en’my’, ‘cruelness’.. the only positive word that helps the reader understand the sonnet is ‘dolci usati segni’, translated by Wyatt into ‘stars’. In the tormented voyage the poet takes comfort from the stras, the eyes of his lover. At the same time Love is his ‘lord’ that ‘drowned is Reason’ and make the reader ‘despairing of the port’, it is the lord of the galley charged with forgetfulness.

Shakespeare – ‘that time of year may’st in me behold’, sonnet 73

Right from the first line the reader can understand the topic of the sonnet, time; more in particular the poet says to an hypothetical reader that he/she can see a specific time of the year in him. The reader may be interested in finding out what period of the year the poet associated himself to and why. In the first two quatrains (the intelligent reader may understand that the sonnet has an English structure of the sonnet: three quatrains and a rhyming couplet) the poet explain his condition: he is at a point of his life that may be compared with autumn, he’s getting old. His youth has been taken away day by day, soon the ‘black night’ (death) will arrive. In the third quatrain the reader can understand the problem associated to his gradual loss of vital force: the gradual loss ‘of such fire’, the loss of passion and desires typical of young people which was, some time before, his nutriment. ’This thou perceivest’ is the beginning of the couplet that differences it from the others: in the quatrains the poet uses the verb ‘see’, but in the couple uses ‘perceives’ a verb that underlines the act of understanding; in the couplet indeed, the poet explains that young people, understanding the condition of older people, may ‘love more strong’ before leaving the ones they love too soon.