Thomas Wyatt

Farewell Love and All Thy Laws Forever

Farewell, Love, and all thy laws forever,

Baited hooks

Love is weaponized as a hunter's trap. The metaphor shifts from romantic to predatory—Wyatt frames love not as desire but as deliberate entanglement, something that catches and holds.

Thy baited hooks shall tangle me no more;
Senec and Plato call me from thy lore,

Senec and Plato

Wyatt names Seneca (the Roman Stoic philosopher) and Plato as his intellectual escape route from love. This isn't romantic—it's a deliberate choice to abandon emotional life for philosophical study, which was a recognized Renaissance path to self-improvement.

To perfect wealth my wit for to endeavor.
In blind error when I did persever,
Thy sharp repulse, that pricketh aye so sore,
Hath taught me to set in trifles no store

Liberty is lever

Notice the rhyme scheme forces 'lever' (meaning 'preferable') to rhyme with 'persever' (persevere). The word choice is awkward but deliberate—freedom is the tool that pries him loose from love's grip.

And 'scape forth since liberty is lever.
Therefore farewell, go trouble younger hearts
And in me claim no more authority.
With idle youth go use thy property;
And thereon spend thy many brittle darts,
For hitherto though I have lost all my time,
Me lusteth no longer rotten boughs to climb.

Rotten boughs

The final image degrades love to dead wood—something decayed and worthless to climb. This is Wyatt's harshest language yet, suggesting love is not just abandoned but revealed as corrupt.

Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Stoic Renunciation, Not Romantic Rejection

This poem is often read as a lover's complaint, but it's actually a philosophical rejection of love itself. Wyatt doesn't say his beloved wronged him—he says love as a system is a trap, and he's choosing reason over passion. By naming Seneca and Plato, he's positioning himself within a Renaissance intellectual tradition that valued self-mastery and wisdom over emotional surrender.

The poem's structure reinforces this: it's a Petrarchan sonnet (the dominant form for love poetry), but Wyatt hijacks it to argue *against* love's authority. He's using the enemy's weapon. The rhyme scheme is tight and logical, the argument builds systematically—this is the language of reason defeating passion, not passion lamenting loss.

The Language of Entrapment and Escape

[CONTEXT: Wyatt wrote this during Henry VIII's reign, when he was imprisoned in the Tower of London, possibly for his involvement with Anne Boleyn. Whether or not the poem refers to that specific experience, the vocabulary of captivity runs throughout.]

Wyatt's key words—baited, tangle, repulse, pricketh, 'scape—describe love as a physical trap that wounds. The body is injured ('pricketh aye so sore'), the will is enslaved ('no more authority'). But notice what's missing: there's no beloved. Love is an abstract system, not a person. This depersonalization is crucial—Wyatt isn't forgiving or blaming anyone; he's declaring the entire game rigged. By the final couplet, he's moved past regret ('though I have lost all my time') into contempt: love's promises are 'rotten boughs,' worthless and decaying. The escape is intellectual, not geographical.