As the sonnet is so bound about with rules, it often makes the thought which it expresses sound a little unreal.  And for that very reason it suited the times in which Wyatt lived.  In those far-off days every knight had a lady whom he vowed to serve and love.  He took her side in every quarrel, and if he were a poet, or even if he were not, he wrote verses in her honor, and sighed and died for her.  The lady was not supposed to do anything in return; she might at most smile upon her knight or drop her glove, that he might be made happy by picking it up.  In fact, the more disdainful the lady might be the better it was, for then the poet could write the more passionate verses.  For all this love and service was make-believe.  It was merely a fashion and not meant to be taken seriously.  A man might have a wife whom he loved dearly, and yet write poems in honor of another lady without thought of wrong.  The sonnet, having something very artificial in it, just suited this make-believe love.

Petrarch, the great Italian poet, from whom you remember Chaucer had learned much, and whom perhaps he had once met, made use of this kind of poem.  In his sonnets he told his love of a fair lady, Laura, and made her famous for all time.

Of course, when Wyatt came to Italy Petrarch had long been dead.  But his poems were as living as in the days of Chaucer, and it was from Petrarch’s works that Wyatt learned this new kind of poem, and it was he who first made use of it in English.  He, too, like Petrarch, addressed his sonnets to a lady, and the lady he took for his love was Queen Anne Boleyn.  As he is the first, he is perhaps one of the roughest of our sonnet writers, but into his sonnets he wrought something of manly strength.  He does not sigh so much as other poets of the age.  He says, in fact, “If I serve my lady faithfully I deserve reward.”  Here is one of his sonnets, which he calls “The lover compareth his state to a ship in perilous storm tossed by the sea.”

    “My galley charged with forgetfulness,
    Through sharpe seas in winter’s night doth pass,
    ’Tween rock and rock; and eke my foe (alas)
    That is my lord, steereth with cruelness: 
    And every oar a thought in readiness,
    As though that death were light in such a case. 
    An endless wind doth tear the sail apace,
    Of forced sighs and trusty fearfulness;
    A rain of tears, a cloud of dark disdain,
    Have done the wearied cords great hinderance: 
    Wreathed with error and with ignorance;
    The stars be his, that lead me to this pain;
    Drowned is reason that should me comfort,
    And I remain, despairing of the port.”

It is not perfect, it is not even Wyatt’s best sonnet, but it is one of the most simple.  To make it run smoothly we must sound the ed in those words ending in ed as a separate syllable, and we must put a final e to sharp in the second line and sound that.  Then you see the rimes are not very good.  To begin with, the first eight all have sounds of s.  Then “alas” and “pass” do not rime with “case” and “apace,” nor do “comfort” and “port.”  I point these things out, so that later on you may see for yourselves how much more polished and elegant a thing the sonnet becomes.