Comparing The Long Love That in My Thought Doth Harbor and The Flea

Comparing Wyatt’s The Long Love That in My Thought Doth Harbor and Donne’s The Flea

Every century has its own poetry; poetry has its own personality and

aspects, especially love poems. In the sixteenth century, poems about

love were more about the court than the lover. In the next century (the

seventeenth), the poems of love were more about courting the lover. An

author from the sixteenth century, Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder, is well

known for his lyrics pertaining to love. An author from the seventeenth

century is John Donne, who is most famous for his love-poetry. When

comparing these two authors, the theme of love is very apparently

different. Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder’s love poems,

such as “The Long Love That in My Thought Doth Harbor,” “bear an imprint

of a strongly individual personality. But the personality is a very

different one from John Donne’s. ”1 One of John Donne’s lyrics, “The

Flea,” is an exemplary of the seventeenth century’s love poems that have

a theme that focuses on the lover.

In the sixteenth century, the poems were obviously not written for the

lover, but for the court. The poem “The Long Love That in My Thought

Doth Harbor” expresses this point through its imagery of a battle. Not

many people would compare their love to a battle, because if they did,

it probably would not be a true love. Wyatt’s conceit is a siege

(battle), and he concentrates on the theme that the lover suffers in

this poem. Wyatt’s poems are not typical love poems; most people would

expect desire, true love winning in t...

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...found in the sixteenth century. The

seventeenth century is more open to the idea of a physical love as well

as a spiritual love. The sixteenth century focuses on love in the court

rather than the lovers.

The theme of love in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is treated

the same in some regards and differently in others. On the whole, Donne

compares love to what he feels, whereas Wyatt compares love to a battle.

Poems about love have drastically changed throughout the centuries.

Love poems have evolved, as have people. But as the poem “The Long Love

That in My Thought Doth Harbor” cites, “For good is the life ending

faithfully.” It’s all worth it in the end. “It is better to have loved

and lost, than to have never loved at all.”