Sir Thomas Wyatt “They Flee From Me” features three septains (seven line stanzas), each with the rime scheme, ABACCDD.
First Septain: “They flee from me that sometime did me seek”
The speaker observes that the women who used to be eager for the speaker’s attention now ignore him; they seem to be eager now to avoid him as they “flee from [him.]” The speaker implies that these women would slip into his bedroom, likely hoping to engage him sexually.
The speaker describes the women as “gentle, tame, and meek” in their behavior back when they also seemed to be “stalking” him. But now those same woman dart from him and are “now wild and do not remember,” that they would go out of their way to be near him. They would defy “danger” for just a crumb of his attention.
Now they “range” or run wildly about searching for attention in other places, probably from other men. The speaker is working to cover his resentment by noting the changes in these women’s behavior, and he, thus, paints them as somewhat psychologically unbalanced in their vacillation of feeling for the speaker. He never offers any reason—nor does he even speculate about it—that the women who so ardently sought him now fervently disregard him.
Second Septain: “Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise”
The speaker, then in rather humble but telling reference, asserts that luckily he did have the opportunity to experience the result of the earlier behavior of being sought after, and on at least twenty occasions successfully bedded the particular huntress.
He especially remembers one time when the scantily clad seductress with “her loose gown” falling “from her shoulders” grabbed him and kissed him and “softly said, ‘Dear heart, how like you this?’” He remembers this instance with great passion and thanks “fortune” for allowing him at least this much.
Third Septain: “It was no dream: I lay broad waking”
The speaker then oddly professes that the seduction scene he has just dramatized was not a dream; it happened when he was wide awake. But then everything changed, and he blames his own “gentleness” for the “strange fashion of forsaking.” He is forsaken, it seems, because of the woman’s “goodness.”
The woman has the audacity to take the initiative in the seduction but then just abandon him; he allows that such behavior is “newfangleness,” which would likely herald the expression, “woman these days.” But the speaker, allowing that he was “so kindly . . . served,” wonders what the woman “hath deserved.” He wonders if she remembers the incident with as much pleasure as he does.
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