The following version of this poem was used to create this guide. Wyatt, Thomas. "They Flee From Me." The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Sixteenth Century / The Early Seventeenth Century. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt (W.W. Norton, 2012).

Note that all parenthetical citations within the guide refer to the lines of the poem from which the quotations are taken.

Sir Thomas Wyatt was an English poet, ambassador, and courtier who was heavily involved in the court of King Henry VIII. He was born in Kent and attended St. John's College at Cambridge before following his father to court. His primary patron was Thomas Cromwell, the Earl of Essex who was beheaded following orders from the king in 1540. After Cromwell's death, Wyatt was briefly imprisoned but eventually acquitted. He died shortly after his release.

Wyatt's poems circulated mostly in manuscript while he was at court. Some speculate that his poetry was published anonymously while he was still alive, but his name did not appear in print alongside his poetry until the publication of Tottell's Miscellany (1557), 15 years after his death. Now, Wyatt is credited with introducing the sonnet form to English literature, along with Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. Wyatt is also known for his rumored affair with Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII.

"They Flee From Me" is one of many of Wyatt's poems that uses a hunting metaphor to describe the speaker's relationship to women with whom he has romantic relations. In the poem, the speaker laments how women who used to gravitate toward him in the past have become fickle and withholding. He recalls one moment in particular in which he lay with a woman who now scorns him. Many assume that this poem, like others in Wyatt's oeuvre, is about Anne Boleyn's rejection of Wyatt after their brief affair.