Thomas Wyatt

Abide and Abide and Better Abide

Repetition as Frustration

The repeated 'abide' signals emotional stasis. Each repetition sounds more desperate.

I abide and abide and better abide,
And after the old proverb, the happy day;

Proverbial Waiting Game

References a common proverb about waiting for a 'happy day'. Suggests cultural expectation of patience.

And ever my lady to me doth say,
"Let me alone and I will provide."
I abide and abide and tarry the tide,
And with abiding speed well ye may.
Thus do I abide I wot alway,

Liminal State of Desire

Neither fully rejected nor accepted—a painful emotional suspension between hope and despair.

Nother obtaining nor yet denied.
Ay me! this long abiding
Seemeth to me, as who sayeth,
A prolonging of a dying death,
Or a refusing of a desir'd thing.
Much were it better for to be plain
Than to say "abide" and yet shall not obtain.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Rhetoric of Waiting

Courtly love poetry often depicts romantic pursuit as a strategic waiting game. Wyatt transforms this convention into a psychological study of emotional paralysis.

The poem's structural repetition of 'abide' mirrors the speaker's trapped psychological state. Each iteration sounds more like resignation than hope, turning a traditional courtly love poem into an existential meditation on desire.

Language of Suspension

[CONTEXT: Wyatt was a courtier in Henry VIII's court, where political and romantic success depended on careful negotiation]

Wyatt uses linguistic ambiguity to capture emotional uncertainty. Phrases like 'tarry the tide' and 'neither obtaining nor denied' create a deliberate sense of suspended animation.

The final lines brutally puncture the earlier politeness, describing waiting as a 'prolonging of a dying death'—a stunning metaphorical collapse of romantic convention.