Love that Doth Reign and Live within my Heart

1. Love that Doth Reign and Live within my Heart By : Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. 

2. His life:- He was the eldest son of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, and his second wife, the former Lady Elizabeth Stafford (daughter ofEdward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham), so he was descended from kings on both sides of his family tree: King Edward I on his father's side and King Edward III on his mother's side. He was reared at Windsor with Henry VIII's illegitimate son Henry FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Richmond and Somerset, and they became close friends and, later, brothers-in-law upon the marriage of Surrey's sister to Fitzroy.[1] Like his father and grandfather, he was a brave and able soldier, serving in Henry VIII's French wars as "Lieutenant General of the King on Sea and Land.“ He was repeatedly imprisoned for rash behavior, on one occasion for striking a courtier, on another for wandering through the streets of London breaking the windows of sleeping towns people.[2]He became Earl of Surrey in 1524 when his grandfather died and his father became Duke of Norfolk.

3. In 1532 he accompanied his first cousin Anne Boleyn, the King, and the Duke of Richmond to France, staying there for more than a year as a member of the entourage of Francis I of France. In 1536 his first son, Thomas (later 4th Duke of Norfolk), was born, Anne Boleyn was executed on charges of adultery and treason, and the Duke of Richmond died at the age of 17 and was buried at one of the Howard homes, Thetford Abbey. In 1536 Surrey also served with his father against the Pilgrimage of Grace rebellion protesting the Dissolution of the Monasteries. In 1536 Surrey also served with his father against the Pilgrimage of Grace rebellion protesting the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

4. Comparing Wyatt and Surrey:- Wyatt and Surrey died young and English poetry suffered a heavy loss form their premature death.They published nothing in their life-time.Their songs and sonnets were published for the first time in 1458, in Tuttle's Miscellany. Their influence could not be felt immediately, a "Whole generation passed before the lead of Wyatt and Surrey was followed'. It was during the Elizabethan era that their poetry fired the imagination of young poets and Italianism took firm root in the English soil. Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard (referred to in the reading and in the blog as Surrey) were two very similar writers. They were close friends and lived working under the infamous Henry VIII. Both were imprisoned multiple times by Henry and in some cases got each other out. When looking at their writing, there is a similar style, maybe because they wrote in the same climate and in the same time period. But if your focus is put on one specific poem by each, you can see that there must be something more going on than just writing in the same time and place.

5. When looking at Wyatt’s poem “The long love that in my thought doth harbor,”and comparing it to Surrey’s “Love, that doth reign and live within my thought,”you notice right away the similarities in the titles. If the poems are taken line by line, only a few differences remain to be seen. Beginning with Wyatt’s and Surrey’s first four lines, line one begins by speaking of the love thatlies within eachnarrators thoughts. In line two both narrators are speaking of the simple thought of love, which is personified into“he,” and moving from a thought to a feeling in the narrators heart. Where, inthe third and fourth line in both poems, “he” is clad in armor and is holding a banner. At this point the love as been symbolized to knight or warrior, and the “banner” is representing of the now thoughts of constant love the narrator’s heart is showing him.

6. Moving on to lines five to eight in both poems,Wyatt and Surrey both speak of how “she” teaches the narrator how to both love and suffer.“She that learneth me to love and suffer” (Wyatt, 5). Compared to Surreys, “But she that taught me love and suffer pain” (5). Line six in both speaks of the narrator’s carless and doubtful love and lust, moving onto line seven, speaking of modest looks towards “her.” Here, there is the slightest difference in lines, as Surrey’s poem takes a turn for the brighter in line eight:“Her smiling grace convereteth straight to ire.” While in Wyatt’s poem his line eight speaks “his hardiness taketh displeasure.”These difference in lines shows that these two narrators and beginning to have different views on the situation, Wyatt’s poem taking a darker side. The poems sync up again beginning in line nine, where the narrators are speaking of fleeing cowardly to the heart, followed by line ten which continues the running and hiding, but a slight variance changes the mood yet again. Wyatt’s poem speaks of “pain and cry,” when fleeing to hide, while Surrey’s narrator merely “plain(s)” or complains. Yet both narrators end up losing their way by line eleven. In the last few lines, the narrators of both poems speak of leaving their “lord” and “master.”Wyatt uses master while Surrey uses the word lord, both speaking in lines twelve to fourteen of leaving this person. Surrey’s use of lord may be a religious reference, being backed by the fact that his poem is the lighter of the two, and Wyatt’s poem seems to be coming from a darker side.

7. Love that Doth Reign and Live within my Heart Henry Howard with Sir Thomas Wyatt, introduced into England the styles and meters of the Italian humanist poets and so laid the foundation of a great age of English poetry. He acknowledged Wyatt as a master and followed him in adapting Italian forms to English verse. He translated a number of Petrarch’s sonnets already translated by Wyatt. Surrey was the first to develop the sonnet form used by William Shakespeare. Surrey was a mighty soldier, just like his father and grandfather, and they all were loyal to the Tudors, that is why his sonnet “Love that Doth Reign and Live within my Heart” is very strong sonnet and full of powerful and war terms. You can see from his poem thathe is influenced by the sixteenth century in which there was a controlling concept calledcourtly love( arranged marriage)and Surry was against this, in his sonnet he focuses on expressing his ideathat a person should fall in love and must not fear and show his feelings to his beloved and not to hide them in his or her heart.

8. It is a Shakespearian sonnet, Written by Henry Howard published in the Renaissance years after his death.It follows the pattern of the Shakespearian sonnet : three quatrains(4lines in each) followed by a final couplet(2lines)its rhyme scheme:Abab _ Cdcd _ Ecec_ff. It is written in iambic pentameterswith very few metrical deviations (only the first foot in the first verse). Major Themes:Unreturned, non-reciprocal love .of love, death, confusion of love , individualism: men can also show their feelings during the Renaissance, controlling love, love is idealized and that the need for love still existed, but the idea that perfect love could never exist . It examines how love chooses you, you can’t choose it. He talks about being in love with a woman who does not return his feelings. Shows that LOVE and PAIN go together, it is 'sweet' to die for love. Personification of love as female. Title:Love, that doth reign and live within my thought. love rules his mind like a king in controlSymbols: Love as war, love as hunting Association of love with thought instead of heart ‘Intellectualization’ of love, conquering the beloved’s love becomes an ‘enterprise’.Literary devices: Military semantic field: ‘banner’, ‘fought’, etc. Personification of love as male. Difficult Terms:eke: also. Shamefast : modest. plain: complain. bide: endure. The tone is: melancholic(sad). The language is: close to everyday language.

9. The sonnet is translated from Petrarch. Compare with Wyatt’s sonnet “The long love that in my heart doth harbor…” or with a literal translation from the Italian.Petrarch whose poetry was about the idealistic approach to love, caused for several Renaissance writers to revisit them and translate them to represent different meanings. Among others, Sir Thomas Wyatt in his poem “The Long Love That in My Thought Doth Harbour” and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey in his poem “Love That Doth Reign and Live Within My Thought,” both explored the varying view of the original poem created byPetrarch. Their views on the aspect of love helped to be shaped by the Renaissance ideas. The poem“The Long Love That in My Thought Doth Harbour” by Wyatt essentially depicts one view on love while the poem “Love That Doth Reign and Live Within My Thought” by Surrey, depicts an almostcontrasting view. Although they both hold Petrarch’s poem as the origin.The notion thatthe need for love still existed, but the idea that perfect love could never exist was what basically what drove the entirety of their ideas, and what made them stream from the Petrarchan idea of idealistic love. Although both poems present Petrarchanism, an attitude in love poetry where the object of desire, a woman, is wicked. In "The long love that in my though doth harbor" more accurately reflects the meaning of the ending and clearly has a Petrarchan conceit, which is unclear in "Love, that doth reign and live within my thought." There fore,I believe "The long love that in my thought doth harbor“ is the superior translation and a better English poem.

10. Explanation of the sonnet: There are clear images of conflict in the sonnet, from "my captive breast" to "his banner rest." Love reigns on one side and Love also takes a cowardly flight on the other. We have lords and ladies and purposes and death. The conflicts in this sonnet also seems to be tiered. First, the poet fights with love, and the end result is that Love reigns in his captive breast. The struggle takes more than a third of the sonnet, perhaps to show that the personal struggle with Love is the most important and hardest. "Clad in arms wherein with me he fought." One sense of the arms can be the physical image of cupping your hands over the heart as it beats wildly for love. Or in wrapping your arms around yourself to console as your love causes you anguish. The emotion that Love brings fights with your will to compose yourself.The arms are more likely to mean weapons in the historical context. Before the fight was only in a emotional, abstract level, now it means war. The fight is between an armed warrior and a captive, it's no wonder the end result has "Oft in my face he doth his banner rest."

11. The sonnet starts within his mind, "Love that live within my thought," and now it moves to the unattainable woman, "she that taught me love and suffer pain." There is a conflict between the hope and desire, the love and the pain that she causes. "My doubtful hope, and also my hot desire" could refer to the poet's hope, the poet's desire, or the lady herself as the personification of the hope and desire. Either way, the conflict is now separate from self and becomes the lady's reluctance to be in love. When "Her smiling grace" "look to shadow and refrain," the poet's love causes anger. The ambiguity leaves open to suggestion whether it is her smile that turns to anger, or her modest smile that turns the poet's love to anger. It doesn't seem to matter which field the poet fights with Love; he always loses. The last stanzas with the lord is a bit confusing. The poet refrains himself because of his lord, but somehow he's stepping on him? "Yet from my lord shall not my foot remove"...so in the end, the poet resigns himself to get killed by the lord for pursuing his love? Or he suicides because he can't take the love. He embraces death in the last fight with love and dies, or feels like as he is dead. The speaker ends the poem by stating that death brought on by love is sweet. This is all put into martial (military) language. This is used to show the conflict that love creates within the speaker. Reign, seat (in this context), captive, coward, lord, and banner all add to the idea that the speaker is a kind of soldier being lead by love, and though it may cause him pain and though it may bring about his death, the speaker will continue to love.

12. "And coward Love, then to the heart apace"The poet her called love a coward because she does not love him back "return his feelings"" Taketh his flight, where he doth lurk and plain, His purpose lost, and dare not show his face."So he decided to take his leave Because there is no reason "His purpose lost ""For my lord's guilt thus faultless bide I pain."Here he feels guilty although he never did something wrong his love to her became a crime "sin"."Yet from my lord shall not my foot remove:"Even yet ,he still love her when he say "shall not my foot remove "As if she was a part of his body ."Sweet is the death that taketh end by love." death that is caused by love is the sweetest death.So the themes of love, death, confusion of love. It examines how love chooses you, you can’t choose it. He talks about being in love with a woman who does not return his feelings. Shows that LOVE and PAIN go together, it is 'sweet' to die for love.

13. *The impact of 16th century in the poem and the poet: Henry Howard as a poet during 16th century(renaissance age). He influenced by this century. He shows this impact through his poem by using some of 16th century characteristics ; 1-The use of the conceit (to make a similarity between two different words or images)he compared love as a warrior by using [captive –clad in the arms- banner – reign – lord (leader) . 2- The use of the Archaic words that ends with the (th) instead of (es)such as [doth-taketh-converteth]these words used at medieval ages ,it was one of the characteristic of the 16th century in literature. 3-Henry Howard as a knight and his work at the army is clear in his poem as he uses a military words such as [reign-captive-clad-banner-lurk-lord(leader)].Also in the last line [sweet is the death that taketh end by love] as it is always referred to a soldier to die in a battle at the end.

14. 4-The use of Humanism. Humanism was fundamental intellectual movement in the renaissance whose first major exponent in England was sir Thomas more. It emphasizes the personal worth of the individual and the central importance of the human values as opposed to religious. It was influenced by the study of ancient Greek , Latin, Literature and philosophy. Here Henry Howard use the sense of humanism when he says [love-death] were of the main subjects at 16th century. 5-Introducing the classical standers, taken fromancient classic-referring to Platonism, there is no Platonic love.

15. 6- He introducing courtly love the main subject at 16th century. Courtly love poems are either sonnets or lyrics that are concerned with an idealized view of love. The male (lover)adores his mistress even though she is the wife of another man. A courtly love is a love relationship between the aristocratic or( nobles people).this love affair is always almost outside marriage was based onfinancial arrangements.The poet venerates and idealizes her, suffers, falls ill for her and sacrifices everything including his life to preserve her honors.Henry Howard shows that in his poem. He talks about his beloved and he describes his suffers and illness against his beloved.