Here is a well-known poem from the 16th Century. It was written by Sir Thomas Wyatt, a nobleman who lived and wrote in England during the reigns of King Henry the Seventh and the famous King Henry the Eighth. Wyatt was quite a lady's man in his younger years, but in this poem he is talking about what has happened to his relationship with the ladies now that he has gotten somewhat older. Read the poem and then read the sample essay which follows it.

They Flee From Me

They flee from me, that sometime did me seek,
With naked foot stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them, gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild, and do not remember
That sometime they put themselves in danger
To take bread at my hand, and now they range,
Busily seeking with a continual change.

Thanked be Fortune it hath been otherwise,
Twenty times better; but once, in special,
In thin array, after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
And she caught me in her arms long and small,
And therewith all sweetly did me kiss
And softly said, "Dear heart, how like you this?"

It was no dream! I lay broad waking,
But all is turned, through my gentleness,
Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go, of her goodness,
And she also to use newfangledness.
But since that I so unkindly am served,
I fain would know what she hath deserved.

As the Roman author Cicero once pointed out, the only way to keep from growing old is to die young, so it isn't really logical to complain about the problems that come from living a long time. Besides, Cicero adds, old age has its compensations. An old man can enjoy the bittersweet pleasure of reminiscing about the past. Wyatt's poem "They Flee From Me" allows the reader just such a glimpse of what it is really like to grow old by presenting both the bitter complaints and the pleasant memories of the speaker.

Wyatt's complaint is that the ladies no longer find him attractive. As the first stanza puts it, the ladies who used to seek him out and who even appeared bare-footed in his bed-chamber now "flee" from him. They used be like tame animals who would eat bread from his hand, but now they "range" far away from him like wild creatures and do not seem to remember that once they came to him willingly. Alas, time has robbed him of his role as a lady's man, and he is going to complain about it no matter what Cicero says!

Wyatt is especially bitter about one woman in particular. Although she and the poet were once special lovers, she now has taken up "newfangledness" and has dismissed him from her life; she has given him "leave to go"; she has treated him "unkindly." (In Wyatt's day, by the way, "unkindly" meant both "cruelly" and "unnaturally.") Thus the last comment of the poem really is especially bitter as the following paraphrase into modern English makes clear: "But since I have been so cruelly and unnaturally treated by her, I would really like to know what treatment she deserves." His tone is so bitter that we are sure he hopes that she will suffer in the same way when she grows old.

Perhaps the most powerful part of the poem, however, is the second stanza where he relives through pleasant memory a very special night, a night that was "twenty times better" than the condition he finds himself in now. As he lay in bed that night, she came into his room in her thin, loose nightgown, so loose that it was falling from her shoulders; and then she wrapped him in her long, slender arms and kissed him sweetly and whispered "Dear heart, how like you this?" For most men such a night is only a dream, but not for Wyatt. As he says, "it was no dream. I lay broad waking." That seems a very fine memory to carry into old age.

Of course, there is much more to growing old than lamenting the passing of one's status as a lady's man or recalling a sweet and sensuous night from long ago. Nevertheless, the poem has endured for nearly five centuries because it presents an authentic recreation of one typical experience in the aging process. Some things never change.