They Flee from Me

"They flee from me" is a poem written by Thomas Wyatt. It is written in rhyme royal and was included in Arthur Quiller-Couch's edition of the Oxford Book of English Verse.
The poem has been described as possibly autobiographical, and referring to any one of Wyatt's affairs with high-born women of the court of Henry VIII, perhaps with Anne Boleyn.

The poem is transmitted in several differing versions: in the Egerton manuscript, in the Devonshire ms. beneath the line "Vixi Puellis Nuper Idoneus" (from Horace's Ode III 26) and in print in Tottel's Miscellany (1557) under the title "The louer sheweth how he is forsaken of such as he somtime enioyed".

References

External links
 Poetry Intensive with Stephen Greenblattfrom poetry.harvard.edu
 discussion with Allen Ginsberg

Category:16th-century poems
Category:Early Modern English literature