Thomas Wyatt -- "He is not ded that sometym hath a fall" -- Third Stage of Reading

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

(It's good to always keep the poem in front of you for reference, so I'm prefacing each section of analysis with it)

Third Stage of Reading
Having gotten good vibes from this poem on the first reading, and fleshed out references to Christian images of hope and redemption on second reading/analysis, let’s trouble the waters a bit.

Context can help us get new perspectives on poems, so long as we think of context as one of many lenses, one of many ways to enjoy a poem and so enrich our lives, never as doctrine for the “one meaning” of the poem. Some context for Wyatt is that he valued reason, had some tough luck and writes a lot about luck and fortune, and doesn’t write a lot about God. The Tudor court at the time was lapping up new and competing philosophies—on the one hand, protestant theories of predestination and individual faith in God; on the other hand, a revival of the ideas of Lucretius, who denied the influence of gods and, through poetry, promoted the theory that everything is made of atoms, whose random swerves give us some free will, and the introduction of English translations of Machiavelli, who also eschews God to talk about dealing with Fortune instead. My impression of Wyatt’s other poems has always been that he has the sensibilities of a courtier-criticizing, proverb-loving protestant with an interest in analyzing reason and fortune with skepticism about divinity.

I want to stress that I hold by the Christian interpretation as a worthwhile reading of this poem—this poem gives several gifts of meaning, and I wholeheartedly support the use of this poem as a prayer and mantra to keep one going when times are tough. AND I support the following interpretation, a parallel version of the poem that involves what I would call the opposite interpretation if I believed in either/or instead of both/and. In a flat ontology, the writer and his life are valuable. The poem alone without a reader or context is valuable. The reader and their history are valuable. Everyone and everything is worthy of respect. So no matter which interpretation seems “more likely”—that the poem is hopeful, that it is Christian, that it is sarcastic, that it is confused as to whether it should be hopeful or not—let us explore all routes.

Here is the sarcastic route. The grim protestant bitterly realizing his hope and faith are for nothing, that we live in a world of absurdity as dictated by fortune. “I’m not dead yet!” cries Monty Python’s knight, as each limb is hacked away. Four hundred years pre-Python, Thomas Wyatt, with the same sardonic wit, cries “he is not ded that somtyme hath a fall” and goes on to list all these “hopeful” ways that things can be totally trashed and still keep going—pointlessly. Even without the above context about why Wyatt might not be trumpeting Christian hope here, we have internal context—the poem itself (1) does not mention God, and (2) specifically mentions Fortune:
              And when Fortune hath spit oute all her gall
              I trust good luck to me shall be allowd
These two lines seem to give us the traditional idea of Fortune’s Wheel: good fortune and bad fortune alternate, and if we cannot have faith in God, we can have faith in Fortune’s cycle—look at all these examples: the sun returns from under a cloud, a ship is broken in a storm but makes it safely home, a man falls but gets back up again, a stagnant willow continues her dance when the winds come round again—and poor Wyatt, well, once Fortune has done her worst, good luck will come his way, he just has to hold out. Right?

Re-examining the examples he gives—his reasons to have faith—we see they are bitter examples of why the wheel metaphor for fortune is flawed. If the wheel takes you through the worst that can happen, you can’t possibly pop out on the other side and be all better. A more apt metaphor would be Fortune’s Steamroller: you might come out alive, which is technically good fortune, but you’re also a pancake, every bone in your body broken. Consider these paraphrases (taking some license) of each image Wyatt uses:

Wyatt
He is not ded that somtyme hath a fall

Paraphrase
He is not dead that lies in the hospital in a vegetative state

Wyatt
The sonne retorneth that was under the clowd

Paraphrase
[to be fair, this doesn’t have an obvious downside]
[And it's good to note when part of a poem doesn't perfectly line up with what you want to be your rock-solid interpretation. This one line here could be the starting point for a fourth line of inquiry and analysis-- instead of brushing over lines like this, we should ask "Why doesn't this work?"]

Wyatt
For I have scene a ship into haven fall
After the storme hath broke boeth mast and shrowd

Paraphrase
Imagine you’re a merchant. You invest everything in this ship—maybe you don’t even own it outright yet-- you've taken out a bunch of loans to pay for it. Only several voyages transporting merchandise will pay off the ship, and hopefully make you a rich merchant! But on the first voyage, the ship is totally wrecked and barely makes it back to port. Probably, it doesn’t even make it back to your port. The lucky sailors land at some distant port and ditch the ship to get celebratory drunk at the nearest pub, just happy to be alive. Now your ship is in the middle of nowhere, and totally useless even if it had gotten back to home port-- you don’t have the funds to repair it or buy a new ship because all your wealth was tied up in the livelihood of the ship. And you're going to go bankrupt because the ship was what you needed to pay off the loans you took out to pay for the ship. It may be bopping peacefully in haven, but you are sunk.

Wyatt
And eke the willowe that stoppeth with the wynde
Doeth ryse again and greater wode doeth bynd

Paraphrase
Going out on a limb here… but it seems like this straight out says “The wind bends the willow over. The willow resists and grows taller, it rises up!.... only to bend its branches itself.” That is, the willow resists outside tyrannical forces only to imitate, to internalize, to self-impose that degradation. Even if we scrape past fortune, we our often our own downfall, unable to break the mold.