They Flee from Me by Sir Thomas Wyatt — Summary & Analysis
Poet: Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542)
Genre/Form: Lyric poem — Rhyme Royal
Curriculum: BA English Honours | Renaissance and Elizabethan Poetry | English Literary History
About the Poet
Sir Thomas Wyatt was born in 1503 in Allington Castle, Kent, England. He served as a diplomat and courtier in the court of King Henry VIII, which placed him at the very centre of Tudor political and romantic intrigue. Wyatt was educated at St John's College, Cambridge, and rose to become one of the most significant poets of the English Renaissance, known for introducing the Italian sonnet form into English literature alongside Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey.
Wyatt's personal life was closely entangled with the court of Henry VIII. He is widely believed to have had a romantic connection with Anne Boleyn before she became the king's second wife — a relationship that placed Wyatt in considerable personal danger. His poetry frequently reflects the tensions of courtly life: the instability of favour, the pain of unrequited or lost love, and the unpredictable power dynamics between men and women in the Tudor court.
His major works include translations and adaptations of Petrarchan sonnets, original love lyrics, satires, and the penitential psalms. Wyatt's poetry is distinguished by its compressed emotional intensity, colloquial directness, and an undercurrent of bitterness that sets it apart from the more idealised conventions of Petrarchan verse. He humanises romantic suffering, writing not of unattainable angels but of real, changeable, and sometimes fickle women.
Wyatt is considered one of the founding figures of the English literary canon. His influence on subsequent Elizabethan and Jacobean poetry is immeasurable. "They Flee from Me" remains his most celebrated and critically discussed lyric — a poem that appears deceptively simple but rewards close reading with its layers of metaphor, irony, and emotional complexity.
Background & Context
"They Flee from Me" was written in the early sixteenth century, during the reign of Henry VIII — one of the most tumultuous periods in English history. The Tudor court was a world of shifting alliances, dangerous ambitions, and complex love affairs. Wyatt's poem is situated precisely within this environment: it is thought to be autobiographical, reflecting the poet's own experiences with women of the court, possibly including Anne Boleyn herself.
The poem belongs to the tradition of the Petrarchan love lyric, but subverts it significantly. Whereas the Petrarchan convention places the male speaker in a posture of humble, idealising worship of an unattainable woman, Wyatt's speaker is embittered, nostalgic, and ultimately sardonic. The women in this poem once came to him voluntarily; they were tame, gentle, and intimate. Their transformation into wild, indifferent creatures who no longer remember him is the central wound the poem explores.
The poem is written in Rhyme Royal, a stanzaic form introduced into English poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer (used famously in Troilus and Criseyde and The Parliament of Fowls). Rhyme Royal consists of seven-line stanzas written in iambic pentameter with the rhyme scheme ABABBCC. The form lends the poem a stately, dignified quality that heightens the contrast with its emotionally raw content. The use of a Chaucerian form also situates Wyatt within a prestigious literary genealogy, signalling the seriousness of his undertaking.
Poem Walkthrough — Stanza-by-Stanza Analysis
Stanza 1
> They flee from me that sometime did me seek
> With naked foot stalking in my chamber.
> I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
> That now are wild and do not remember
> That sometime they put themself in danger
> To take bread at my hand; and now they range,
> Busily seeking with a continual change.
Explanation:
The poem opens with a striking reversal: the speaker recalls women who once actively sought him out ("sometime did me seek") but who now flee from him. The use of "they" rather than "she" is significant — the plural pronoun suggests multiple lovers or the speaker's generalisation of a pattern of abandonment. It also gives the stanza an almost allegorical quality, as though the women represent fortune, favour, or beauty itself, all of which are famously inconstant.
"With naked foot stalking in my chamber" is one of the most debated lines in the poem. "Naked foot" can be read literally — women coming to his chamber barefoot, suggesting stealth, intimacy, and informal familiarity. It is also widely interpreted as a reference to sexual intimacy: coming to his chamber barefoot implies undressed, vulnerable, and willing. "Stalking" here does not carry a sinister connotation; in Tudor English it meant moving softly or quietly, reinforcing the image of women slipping discreetly to his room.
The speaker remembers them as "gentle, tame, and meek" — almost like domesticated animals. This animal metaphor is sustained throughout the stanza: they once took "bread" from his hand (like tamed deer or falcons accepting food from a falconer), putting themselves "in danger" to do so — meaning they risked social or personal exposure to be with him. But now they "range," a term that evokes wild animals roaming freely, no longer under any attachment to him. They seek "a continual change" — restlessly moving from one lover to another, or simply turning away from him altogether.
The overall mood of this stanza is one of bewildered loss and nostalgic contrast: past intimacy set against present indifference. The tone is quiet but carries an undertow of hurt.
Stanza 2
> Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise
> Twenty times better; but once in special,
> In thin array after a pleasant guise,
> When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
> And she me caught in her arms long and small;
> Therewith all sweetly did me kiss
> And softly said, 'Dear heart, how like you this?'
Explanation:
The second stanza shifts focus from the general pattern of abandonment to a specific, vivid memory. The speaker acknowledges that fortune has been kind to him "twenty times better" — implying he has had many good encounters — but then singles out one particular woman and one particular moment as supremely memorable.
The scene is rendered with remarkable sensory detail. The woman is described as being in "thin array after a pleasant guise" — wearing a light, loosely worn gown, dressed in an easy, attractive manner. The moment crystallises when "her loose gown from her shoulders did fall" — a gesture that is at once accidental and erotically charged, suggesting uninhibited sensuality and the natural ease of intimacy between them.
She "caught in her arms long and small" — she embraced him in her slender arms. There is something tender and unexpectedly active here: she reaches for him, she initiates. This is a woman of agency, not a passive object of desire. She kisses him "sweetly" and then asks, in one of the most famous lines of Tudor poetry: "Dear heart, how like you this?" — a playful, confident, even teasing question. It implies that she is aware of her own power and the pleasure she gives; she knows the effect of her embrace.
This stanza represents the emotional climax of the poem — a moment of perfect, mutual, joyful intimacy recalled with exquisite clarity. Its vividness makes the subsequent abandonment all the more painful by contrast. The memory is so precisely drawn that it reads almost like a dream, which is why the third stanza immediately insists: "It was no dream."
Stanza 3
> It was no dream: I lay broad waking.
> But all is turned thorough my gentleness
> Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
> And I have leave to go of her goodness,
> And she also, to use newfangleness.
> But since that I so kindly am served,
> I would fain know what she hath deserved.
Explanation:
The final stanza is a masterpiece of compressed irony. The speaker begins by insisting on the reality of the encounter just described — "I lay broad waking" means he was fully awake, not dreaming. This insistence underscores both how real the memory is and how unreal the subsequent loss feels.
The turn comes with "But all is turned thorough my gentleness / Into a strange fashion of forsaking." The speaker offers a rueful, sardonic explanation for the reversal: his own "gentleness" — his kindness, his tenderness, his good treatment of the woman — has somehow resulted in her leaving him. This is bitter irony: goodness and gentleness should inspire loyalty, but here they appear to have encouraged the woman's freedom to depart. The phrase "strange fashion of forsaking" is contemptuous — it frames her departure as a perverse trend, a bizarre new mode of behaviour.
"I have leave to go of her goodness" — she has graciously given him permission to leave, as though she is doing him a favour by releasing him. The irony is cutting. "And she also, to use newfangleness" — she too is free now to pursue novelty, to seek new lovers or new pleasures. "Newfangleness" is a Tudor word for the love of new things, fickleness, or inconstancy. It is not a flattering characterisation.
The final couplet — "But since that I so kindly am served, / I would fain know what she hath deserved" — is the poem's devastating conclusion. "Kindly" here carries a double meaning: literally, it means "in a kindly manner" (she has treated him well in a mocking sense), but it also ironically means "in accordance with her nature" — this is simply what she is. "I would fain know what she hath deserved" is a rhetorical question loaded with sarcasm: the speaker implies she deserves punishment or reproach, but his "civilised" restraint (or resignation) means he stops just short of open accusation. He allows the irony to do the work.