or again—­

Forget not!  O forget not this!—­
How long ago hath been, and is,
The mind that never meant amiss: 

            Forget not yet!

or again (can personal note go straighter?)—­

And wilt thou leave me thus? 
Say nay, say nay, for shame! 
To save thee from the blame
—­Of all my grief and grame. 
And wilt thou leave me thus? 

            Say nay! say nay!

(Say ‘nay,’ say ‘nay’; and don’t say, ‘the answer is in the negative.’)

No:  I have yet to mention the straightest, most natural of them all, and will read it to you in full—­

What should I say? 
Since Faith is dead
And Truth away
From you is fled? 
Should I be led
With doubleness? 
Nay! nay! mistress.

I promised you
And you promised me
To be as true
As I would be: 
But since I see
Your double heart,
Farewell my part!

Thought for to take
Is not my mind;
But to forsake
One so unkind;
And as I find,
So will I trust,
Farewell, unjust!

Can ye say nay
But that you said
That I alway
Should be obeyed? 
And—­thus betrayed
Or that I wist! 
Farewell, unkist!

I observe it noted on p. 169 of Volume iii of “The Cambridge History of English Literature” that Wyat ’was a pioneer and perfection was not to be expected of him.  He has been described as a man stumbling over obstacles, continually falling but always pressing forward.’  I know not to what wiseacre we owe that pronouncement:  but what do you think of it, after the lyric I have just quoted?  I observe, further, on p. 23 of the same volume of the same work, that the Rev. T. M. Lindsay, D.D., Principal of the Glasgow College of the United Free Church of Scotland, informs us of Wilson’s “Arte of Rhetorique” that

there is little or no originality in the volume, save, perhaps, the author’s condemnation of the use of French and Italian phrases and idioms, which he complains are ‘counterfeiting the kinges Englishe.’  The warnings of Wilson will not seem untimely if to be remembered that the earlier English poets of the period—­Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder, and the Earl of Surrey—­drew their inspiration from Petrarch and Ariosto, that their earlier attempts at poetry were translations from Italian sonnets, and that their maturer efforts were imitations of the sweet and stately measures and style of Italian poesie.  The polish which men like Wyatt and Surrey were praised for giving to our ’rude and homely manner of vulgar poesie’ might have led to some degeneration.

Might it, indeed?  As another Dominie would have said, ‘Pro-digious.’

      (Thought for to take
      Is not my mind;
      But to forsake

This Principal of the Glasgow College of the United Free Church of Scotland—­

      Farewell unkiss’d!)