In Sir Thomas Wyatt's poem, "I find no peace, and all my
war is done," the reader has a sense of a man conflicted by the world around
him.
This poem is written as a Petrarchan (Italian) sonnet
(with an eight-line octave, and a six-line sestet). The rhyme scheme appears to be ABBA
ABBA CDDC EE, which is a variation of the Petrarchan sonnet. (It is interesting to note
that Wyatt introduced the sonnet form in English, from the original
Italian).
Regarding the structure of the poem in terms of
language, Wyatt chooses contradictions which provide the reader with the author's sense
of being pulled between two extremes, as a conflicted person would feel (back and
forth).
The line below speaks to a man no longer at war,
but unable to find peace.
I find no peace, and all my war is
done.
The contradictions of
the next several lines demonstrate the "back and forth" motion of wanting to be hopeful,
but being fearful instead (I fear and hope), or wanting the positive, but held back—at
the same time—by the negative:
I burn and freeze like ice.
I fly
above the wind, yet can I not
arise;
The next line is
difficult to follow because of the archaic (I assume) use of "season." Used in its
context within the sentence, I feel Wyatt is saying that he has nothing, though the
entire world has been opened to him. ("Nought" means
"nothing.")
And nought I have, and all the world I
season.
The next lines
indicate that Wyatt sees himself as a prisoner, perhaps of his own perceptions of life,
but not because there is a lock that holds him in
place.
That
loseth nor locketh holdeth me in prison
And holdeth me not--yet can I scape
no wise--
Wyatt goes on here
to say that he cannot choose to die (perhaps a religious allusion), and yet he is
visited by death in life. (This might refer to death around him, or that he feels like
he is dying.)
Nor letteth me live nor die at my
device,
And yet of death it giveth me
occasion.
His next line
speaks to not having eyes, but still seeing (perhaps the sense is either that he closes
his eyes and is still haunted by images in his mind), but also notes he has no tongue,
but still he complains ("plains," which might mean that he has no words to fully express
himself and what does come out of his mouth sounds merely like complaints, rather than
what he wants to say).
Without eyen I see, and without tongue I
plain.
The following lines
provide even more contradictions:
"I desire to perish, and yet I ask health" (he
wants to die, but wants also to live)
"I love another, and
thus I hate myself" (Through loving another, he hates
himself.)
I feed me in sorrow and laugh in all my pain; (I
am filled with sorrow, but laugh at the pain, perhaps an ironic or self-despising kind
of laugh.)
The last two lines
refer to the fact that what he finds both pain and delight in, is what causes all of his
discomfort.
Likewise displeaseth me both life and
death,
And my delight is causer of this
strife.
The war that Wyatt
describes at the beginning deals with love and its "death," the end of the relationship,
which has left the poet feeling totally torn apart. The structured language that
provides the sense of the back and forth, of being pulled in different directions, is
the poet's struggle to pull his life together again in face of the loss of his
sweetheart. The last lines function as a couplet, a complete thought: in life and death,
this woman, paradoxically, causes him both "delight" and "strife"
(conflict).
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