They flee from me . . . Sir Thomas Wyatt
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 themself in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range,
Busily seeking with a continual change.
There are two versions of Sir Thomas Wyatt's lyric beginning "They flee from me"; the more familiar one as edited and printed in Tottel's 
egerton msMiscellany in 1557, and a version from the Egerton Manuscript (Egerton MS 2711, British Library), which is much closer to what Wyatt wrote—indeed, it has corrections in Wyatt's own hand. The version in Tottel's Miscellany was altered, largely in small ways, in order to make it fit the meter. Wyatt's "They flee from me" is generally considered to belong, like the sonnet "Whoso List to Hunt," to a small cluster of poems about Anne Boleyn, before Henry VIII made her his queen. The best of these poems is "They flee from me." We know Wyatt knew Anne well; we know he wrote a poem about her death at the Frenchman's sword, an event he probably watched from his prison window in the Tower of London. He wrote in "Who list his wealth and ease retain":
The Bell Tower showed me such sight That in my head sticks day and night.
There did I learn of of a grate
For all favor, glory, or might,
That yet circa regna tonat.
The basic narrative of "They flee from me" is the lover remembers (or imagines) a tryst with a woman who no longer has a relationship with him. The first stanza is an extended metaphor (a conceit) in which he metaphorically describes the woman as a bird, feeding from his hand. He moves in the second stanza to a specific memory, and then uses the third to comment on the relationship, and the "changeable" nature of the woman. Notice that "kindly" in the next to last stanza means, not just "kind" in Modern English, but "naturally," as "her kind," is wont to behave, a return to the wild bird metaphor of the first stanza. Scholars are fairly certain that Wyatt's feelings for Boleyn were not returned; indeed, Wyatt, while long separated from his wife, had nothing to offer Boleyn, and would certainly not have entertained the thought of competing against Henry VIII for her affections. But Wyatt was very much part of the court and its literary circles, and the fashion was for lyrics about lost love. One of the manuscripts containing Wyatt's poems, the Devonshire manuscript, was passed from person to person among the poets at court, with each adding a poem, or responding to someone else's poem with one of their own, as a literary game.
Wyatt, between court intrigue, repeated imprisonment, and the rigors of foreign diplomacy (and, likely, spying for the crown) grew somewhat disenchanted with politics. In 1536 when he was banished from the court, he retired to his country estate for a time where he wrote "Mine Own John Poins," a verse epistle to his friend John Poins inspired by an Italian satire by Luigi Alamanni. In the poem, adjusted to suit England's clime. Wyatt died of a fever in 1542, caught while riding to meet the new Spanish envoy.
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 themself 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 me caught in her arms long and small;
Therewithall 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 thorough my gentleness
Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go of her goodness,
And she also, to use newfangleness.
But since that I so kindly am served
I would fain know what she hath deserved.—Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542)
