SOURCE: “The Anglo-Saxon Theme of Exile in Renaissance Lyrics: A Perspective on Two Sonnets of Sir Walter Ralegh,” in ELH, Vol. 42, No. 2, Summer, 1975, pp. 171-88.

In the following essay, Williams examines Raleigh's sonnets in the context of Old English Lyric.

The line of descent of later English poetry from Anglo-Saxon antecedents becomes increasingly clear as we understand better where to look for the evidence; that is, when we recognize that continuity lies not in a direct line of literary influence, but in theme, in those sound effects most congenial to the language, and often in a heavily connotative diction drawn from the native elements of the language. The line of development is especially clear when the three elements happen to coincide. We cannot look to specific Old English poems as sources, particularly for fifteenth and sixteenth century verse because those were fallow centuries when both the old poetry...