SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS OF FORGET NOT YET

SIR THOMAS WYATT: SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS OF FORGET NOT YET

Summary

The poem is written as five quatrains, with a rhyming tercet followed by a fourth line repeated as a refrain throughout the song.

Lines 1-4

In the first four lines, the poet asks for the audience to not overlook his intention to succeed in meaning and truth, and to think about the nice efforts he has willingly made. The fourth line refrain ‘Forget not yet’ emphasizes this request.

Lines 5-8

The request here is for the audience to not forget once they first began this tired lifetime of service and courtship, which nobody really understands. The refrain in line 8 could be a repetition of line 4.

Lines 9-12

Here the audience is asked to not overlook the massive criticisms, the mean injustices, the cruel treatment and therefore the pain of waiting through delays in decision-making. Line 12 could be a repetition of line 4 again, and this serves to create up the negative issues, which the narrator is attempting to spotlight.

Lines 13-16

The appeal here is to not ignore how way back it had been (and is) that the mind never meant any harm. The repeated refrain of line 4 is employed for the last time here.

Lines 17-20

The final quatrain requests that the reader consider people who were approved, who have loved the audience for therefore long and who have remained faithful. the ultimate line of the quatrain may be a variation of the refrain used through the remainder of the poem. the road becomes ‘Forget not This!’

Analysis

The song consists of the three line rhyme, or tercet, followed by a fourth line which is repeated, forming a refrain. The intention is to stress the connected point of every tercet with a repeated request to ‘forget not’ forming the ultimate quatrain, or four line verse. the employment of the negative, ‘forget not’, instead of ‘remember’ accentuates the tone of melancholy and regret.

The first verse stresses the honesty and truth with which the song consists. By beginning with this assertion, the audience is compelled to work out the subsequent sentiments and observations as sincere. There has been considerable effort – ‘great travail’ – put in to the present message; not just within the formal structure of the verse, but within the diplomacy with which a difficult and dangerous sentiment is phrased and expressed.

By the second verse the poet highlights the life within the court, how exhausting it's for audience and narrator, and the way clandestine the affairs of court are. it's certain that within the young court of King King of Great Britain, who was a monarch at 17 and surrounded himself with the young, the witty and also the beautiful.