Repeated Refrain
The phrase 'Say nay!' creates a desperate, pleading rhythm. Notice how it becomes more urgent with each stanza.
Medieval Love Language
'Grame' is an archaic word meaning grief or sorrow. Wyatt uses old English to heighten the emotional intensity.
Emotional Escalation
Each stanza increases the emotional stakes, moving from practical concerns to raw emotional pain.
Reading Notes
Courtly Love's Desperate Edge
Courtly love poetry typically presented love as a noble, refined emotion. Wyatt subverts this by showing raw, almost undignified emotional vulnerability.
The poem's structure is deliberately fragmented, with short lines and a repeating question that suggests emotional breakdown. Each stanza builds a case against abandonment, moving from logical arguments to pure emotional plea.
Renaissance Emotional Complexity
[CONTEXT: Wyatt was a courtier in Henry VIII's court, known for translating Italian poetry and introducing new emotional complexity to English verse]
The poem reveals the tension between social performance and genuine feeling. The repeated 'Say nay!' becomes both a formal rhetorical device and a genuine cry of emotional pain.
Wyatt's innovation is making personal vulnerability a form of poetic strength, not weakness.