Thomas Wyatt -- "He is not ded that sometym hath a fall" -- First Impressions

Thomas Wyatt
He is not ded that somtyme hath a fall
The sonne retorneth that was under the cloud
And when fortune hath spit oute all her gall,
I trust good luck to me shalbe allowd.
For I have sene a shipp into haven fall
After the storme hath broke boeth mast and shrowd
And eke the willowe that stoppeth with the wynde
Doeth ryse again and greater wode doeth bynd

My initial reflex response to this poem was to feel struck by the beauty and hopefulness of it. The words “he is not ded” open the poem with a resilient and stubborn refusal to surrender. The idea that a ship could “into haven fall” plays with a startlingly fresh, topsy-turvy depiction of Christian redemption: humans are fallen, yet perhaps through God’s grace we fall upward, or through God’s mercy, we find in our final hour that despite our unfailing downward trajectory we have miraculously landed somewhere far above where we first jumped off, and fall into heaven.

Here are two poems that evoke a similar idea-- both through the use of snow. In the first, both falling and rising are positive, and interrelated. In the second, falling also has a positive outcome regardless of rising.

Howard Nemerov "Because You Asked About the Line Between Poetry and Prose"

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle

That while you watched turned to pieces of snow 

Riding a gradient invisible

From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.

And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

Hannah Stephenson  "Good Job You Now Know the World’s Secrets"

If snow were a message

and it is

it would mean

falling

is the source

of all repair