Wyatt's "How the Lover Perisheth": A Sonnet Analysis

Overview of the Sonnet's Central Metaphor

Sir Thomas Wyatt's sonnet "How the Lover Perisheth in His Delight as the Fly in the Fire" describes how love, passion, and beauty can be all-consuming and self-destructive. The poet uses an extended metaphor of birds as a substitute or symbol for male lovers generally, and for the speaker of the poem specifically, while the sun represents the female lover — the possessor of great beauty and the source of the fire or passion.

It is the nature of the birds and their relationship to the sun that concerns the speaker at first. He observes that some birds are able to shield their eyes from the sun's light, while others venture out only at night because the sun is simply too much for them to handle. Many, however, try to play in the sun and ultimately find themselves consumed by its blaze.

The Speaker's Self-Portrait and Tragic Awareness

After describing this last type of bird, the speaker turns to comment on himself — the reason behind the running metaphor. He is one of the latter type of birds: drawn to his lover's flame, whether that flame represents her beauty or the passion she kindles in him (the two are essentially inseparable in such Petrarchan love poetry), despite knowing it will destroy him. The added tragic element is that the speaker is fully aware of his fate and is tortured by his lover's absence even as he reflects on the destructive nature of his love and passion for her.

Strengths and Weaknesses of the Poem's Conceit

This sonnet is a decent example of its genre and period, but several features make it less successful than other sonnets — particularly those of Shakespeare, Donne, and the more modern verse of Edna St. Vincent Millay. One issue is the title, which gives away the poem's conceit before it is even read. Although there is no strict requirement to follow the convention of simply numbering sonnets, the title here essentially describes in a single sentence the metaphor that the poem explores. This makes for a less enjoyable reading experience, since the reader already knows where things are headed before arriving there.

To be fair, the symbol of the fly and the fire does not actually appear until the final line of the poem, and the fly — to which the speaker compares himself at that point — is not named outside of the title. Nevertheless, the basic meaning and thrust of the poem is revealed too early. The final line and the twist it implies are, in fact, among the more enjoyable moments in the sonnet. The speaker reduces the scale of the metaphor considerably, implying a degree of self-deprecation and perceived insignificance. Throughout the poem the speaker sees himself as at least somewhat foolish, comparing himself to a bird that still pretends to enjoy something that is in reality too bright for it and ultimately destructive.

However, the imagery of birds and the sun makes the entire scene larger than life and highly significant. Reducing the scale to that of a fly and a "glead" — a live coal, not even a full fire but simply a hot and glowing lump — makes the epic grandeur of the opening quatrains seem almost humorous by contrast. This tonal shift is one of the poem's more sophisticated effects, and it rewards the attentive reader who recognizes the structural conventions of the sonnet form being playfully subverted.

Conclusion

In general, the diction and imagery are strong, and the sonnet is a decent example of its genre and period — even if its title, its early volta, and the weakness of its closing couplet prevent it from reaching the heights achieved by the finest sonnets in the English tradition.