fainting I follow

I spent today at a pretty great one-day conference sponsored by my department and organized by some of my colleagues. In the last talk, the speaker brought Frank O'Hara (1926-1966)—who, serendipitously, I posted yesterday—into conversation with Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)—who, serendipitously, I have only posted once before. This is not the Wyatt poem that was discussed in the talk, but it's one of the most famous, and up there among my favorites.

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind, 

But as for me, hélas, I may no more. 

The vain travail hath wearied me so sore, 

I am of them that farthest cometh behind. 

Yet may I by no means my wearied mind 

Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore 

Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore, 

Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind. 

Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt, 

As well as I may spend his time in vain. 

And graven with diamonds in letters plain 

There is written, her fair neck round about: 

Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am, 

And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.

—Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542), "Whoso List to Hunt." 

There's a fairly widespread assumption that Wyatt wrote this poem about Anne Boleyn, which may or may not change a person's reading of the poem. Wyatt is widely credited (along with the Earl of Surrey and some others) with bringing the sonnet into English, and this is certainly a sonnet; it's also one of Wyatt's closest imitations of Petrarch, and can arguably be considered a (loose) translation of sonnet 190 from Petrarch's Canzoniere. Like a lot of poetry of the period, this poem appears in many different variant forms, punctuated in a variety of ways; I snagged this version from the good old Poetry Foundation and have preserved their punctuation and style choices, though they do not attribute their version. The poem was first published in Tottel's Miscellany in 1557.