skills

Simple poem(شعر ساده)

Whoever wishes to hunt, I know where there is a deer. But don't count on me to ride it down with you. I no longer have the desire. The work it takes has made me very tired, and I am now farther behind in the chase than anyone else. 
.......Yet I find it difficult to take my mind off the deer, and as she continues to run I follow. But I weaken; my enthusiasm is gone. Consequently, I am quitting the chase since trying to catch the deer is as futile as trying to catch the wind in a net. I advise others to quit the chase too, lest their time is wasted. Be aware that the hind wears a necklace encrusted with diamonds that spell out a warning that no hunter dares to touch her, for she belongs to the ruler of the land and she is wild even though she seems tame.

"Whoso List to Hunt" is one of thirty sonnets written by Sir Thomas Wyatt. Although Wyatt never published his poems, several, including "Whoso List to Hunt," appeared in the 1557 edition of the printer Richard Tottel's Songs and Sonnets written by the Right Honorable Lord Henry Howard late Earl of Surrey and other, more briefly referred to as Tottel's Miscellany.

"Whoso List to Hunt" is held to be Wyatt's imitation of "Rime 190," written by Petrarch, a fourteenth-century Italian poet and scholar. In "Whoso List to Hunt," Wyatt describes a hunt wherein a deer is pursued and ultimately owned by the royal who owns the land. Scholars generally believe that the poem is an allegory referring to Anne Boleyn's courtship by King Henry VIII, such that when Wyatt speaks of the deer as royal property not to be hunted by others, he is acknowledging that Anne has become the property of the King alone. Wyatt was said to have been interested in Anne—and may have been her lover—but would have withdrawn as a suitor after the King made clear his wish to claim her.

Wyatt introduced the sonnet, a fourteen-line poem with a fixed format and rhyme scheme, to England. Despite not publishing his poetry, Wyatt would have made his poems readily available to others. During the Elizabethan period, poets passed their work around in aristocratic circles, in what has been described as a sort of game of one-upmanship: each poet's work inspired his readers to create something comparable or better. Wyatt chose the Petrarchan sonnet as his inspiration. The Petrarchan sonnet is a fourteen-line poem in which the first eight lines, the octave, present a problem, which is resolved by the final six lines, the sestet. Wyatt altered the Petrarchan formula, ending the sestet with two lines, a couplet, that rhyme. As such, he set a precedent for later poets, many of whom further altered the sonnet formula. Also, in focusing on a hunting allegory in "Whoso List to Hunt," Wyatt demonstrated that sonnets could explore more than unrequited love, on which Petrarch had focused. Wyatt's poem is frequently found in literature anthologies, as well as in several editions of his own poetry, including Sir Thomas Wyatt: Collected Poems (1975), edited by Joost Daalder.

Whoso List to Hunt Summary

Lines 1-4

In line 1 of "Whoso List to Hunt," the narrator states that for those who wish to hunt, he knows of a particular hind, a female deer. The narrator himself is trying to abandon the hunt, acknowledging in line 2 that this hind is beyond his reach. Indeed, he is "wearied" from the "vain travail," the useless work, of the hunt; he has begun to recognize the futility of the pursuit. He laments in the fourth line that he is the last of the pursuers, the one "that farthest cometh behind."

Lines 5-8

In the second stanza, the narrator states that he cannot take his "wearied mind … from the deer." When she flees, he proclaims, "Fainting I follow." Nevertheless,...

1.     In Wyatt's "Whoso List to Hunt," the speaker never truly addresses his beloved; however, he is addressing others who are interested in the hunt.  Take the first line, for example:  "Whoso list to hunt:  I know where is a hind."  The speaker, then, does know where there is a female deer who has up until that point eluded the speaker.  Of course, in the final sestet the speaker takes back his challenge to other hunters because the deer has already been claimed by the royal owner of the land.

I can't give this answer, though, without mentioning the incredibly awesome allegory here.  The deer is most likely Anne Boleyn.  Thomas Wyatt was supposedly courting Anne Boleyn; however, he had to cease as Henry VIII became interested.  Obviously Henry VIII (with his notorious reputation) was not someone you wanted to mess with.  Therefore, the speaker (Wyatt) never truly addresses his lover (Anne), but simply warns other suitors that she is already taken.

          Title

......."Whoso List to Hunt" is an alternate title for Thomas Wyatt's "The Lover Despairing to Attain Unto His Lady's Grace Relinquisheth the Pursuit." The longer title says that a lover pursuing a woman gives up the chase because he despairs of winning her favor.

Type of Work

.......“Whoso List to Hunt” is a sonnet, a lyric poem with fourteen lines and a specific rhyme scheme. 
.......The sonnet format originated in Sicily in the thirteenth century with Giacomo da Lentino (1188-1240), a lawyer. The poetic traditions of the Provençal region of France apparently influenced him, but he wrote his poems in the Sicilian dialect of Italian. Some authorities credit another Italian, Guittone d'Arezzo (1230-1294), with originating the sonnet. The English word "sonnet" comes from the Italian word "sonetto," meaning "little song." Some early sonnets were set to music, with accompaniment provided by a lute.
.......The Italian poet Petrarch (1304-1374), a Roman Catholic priest, popularized the sonnet form. Other notable Italian sonneteers were Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), Italy's most famous and most accomplished writer, and Guido Cavalcante (1255-1300). 
.......Petrarch's sonnets each consist of an eight-line stanza (octave) and a six-line stanza (sestet). The first stanza presents a theme, and the second stanza develops it or answers a question presented by the octave. The rhyme scheme is as follows: (1) first stanza (octave): ABBA, ABBA; (2) second stanza (sestet): CDE, CDE (or CDC, CDC; or CDE, DCE).
.......The sonnet form was introduced in England by Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547). They translated Italian sonnets into English and wrote sonnets of their own. Wyatt himself wrote more than one hundred original poems, many of them sonnets. "Whoso list to Hunt" is based on a theme developed in one of Petrarch's sonnets.
.......Wyatt and Surrey sometimes replaced Petrarch's scheme of an eight-line stanza and a six-line stanza with three four-line stanzas and a two-line conclusion. Wyatt used this structural scheme in "Whoso List to Hunt." 
.......In Italy, England, and elsewhere between the thirteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the most common theme of sonnets was love. Sonnets in later times also focused on religion, politics, and other topics. 

Rhyme Scheme and Meter

.......The poem has a rhyme scheme of abba abba cbbc bb. The meter is iambic pentameter, a pattern in which a line has five pairs of unstressed and stressed syllables—ten syllables in all. However, several lines in "Whoso List to Hunt" have extra syllables. Lines 2 and 3 reveal the predominant iambic-pentameter pattern:

.....1............2...............3.............4............5
^{But AS..|..for ME,..|..hé LAS,..|..I may..|..no more.}
.....1................2..................3................4...............5
^{The VAIN..|..tra VAIL..|..hath WEAR..|..ied ME..|..so SORE}

Background and Summary of the Poem

.......Thomas Wyatt's father was a member of the Privy Council of England's King Henry VIII. This fact—along with Thomas's good looks, sociability, and knowledge of foreign languages and music—enabled him to make inroads at the king's court. He served Henry in various roles, most notably as a diplomat in France and Italy. In the latter country, he became interested in the sonnets of Petrarch. The sonnet—sonetto in Italian—was a type of poem that had not yet been introduced to England. After returning home, Wyatt translated many of Petrarch's sonnets into English and began writing his own sonnets.
.......While serving the king in the 1520s, Wyatt became interested in an attractive and witty young lady who frequented the court, Ann Boleyn. But a few years later, the king himself began courting Boleyn while seeking an annulment from his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Henry later married Boleyn after declaring his union with Catherine invalid. Consequently, Wyatt, who was in an unhappy marriage, had to give up any thoughts of winning Boleyn for himself. His sonnet is believed to be an expression of his frustration at this turn of events. 
.......The poem tells of a deer hunt in which several riders are chasing a hind (female deer). The deer hunt and the hind are both metaphors, the hunt representing young men pursuing an alluring woman at the king's court and the hind representing the woman herself, presumably Boleyn. In plain English, the poem says the following:

.......

.......Following is the 1557 text of the poem, followed by explanatory notes.
 

Themes

Unattainable Love

.......The speaker chases a woman whom he cannot—and must not—catch, for she is a prize of the ruler of the land. If the speaker continues to pursue her, he will incur the wrath of the ruler and probably lose his head. In real life, King Henry VIII accused Wyatt of committing adultery with his wife, Ann Boleyn (apparently the hind in the poem), and imprisoned him in the Tower of London in 1536. The charges against him were dismissed. Ironically, it was Ann Boleyn who lost her head in the same year as Wyatt's imprisonment after she fell out of favor with the king. 

Bowing to Absolute Power

.......There comes a time when the wisest course in a struggle to achieve a goal is to cease striving. Such is the case with the author of "Whoso List to Hunt," Thomas Wyatt. When pursuing Ann Boleyn, he encounters an all-powerful rival, King Henry VIII. What the headstrong Henry wants, he gets. Wyatt well knows that defying the headstrong Henry can only result in an appointment with an executioner. Consequently, he yields to the king. Wyatt's poem is an allegory that explains the futility of opposing an irresistible force.

Unattainable Goal

.......The poem can stand as a metaphor for the frustration a person experiences after circumstances prevent him or her from achieving a goal. This is a timeless theme that occurs frequently in literature. In Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, for example, the title character's ridiculously long nose prevents him from competing for the hand of the woman he loves. In the story of Tantalus in Greek mythology, the gods of Olympus cast Tantalus, a Lydian king, into Hades for offending them. There, he stands in a pool of water. Above him is a fruit tree. Whenever he tries to quench his thirst by stooping to drink from the pool, the water recedes. Whenever he tries to satisfy his hunger with fruit from the tree, the wind blows the fruit out of his reach. Tantalus is thus doomed to spending eternity in frustration. 
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Figures of Speech

Examples of figures of speech in the poem are the following:

Line 1:...Metaphor: comparison of a woman to a hind (female deer)
Line 1: ..Alliteration: Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind
Line 3: ..Alliteration: so sore
Line 5:...Alliteration: Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Line 8:...Metaphor: comparison of the task of catching and winning the woman to catching wind with a net.
Line 14:.Paradox: And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.