Thus I alone, where all my freedom grew, In prison pine with bondage and restraint; And with remembrance of the greater grief, To banish the less, I find my chief relief.
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
Sonnet 8 [Set me where as the sun doth parch the green]
By Henry Howard
Set me where as the sun doth parch the green,
Or where his beams do not dissolve the ice;
In temperate heat where he is felt and seen;
With proud people, in presence sad and wise;
Set me in base, or yet in high degree,
In the long night, or in the shortest day,
In clear weather, or where mists thickest be,
In lost youth, or when my hairs be grey;
Set me in earth, in heaven, or yet in hell,
In hill, in dale, or in the foaming flood;
Thrall, or at large, alive where so I dwell,
Sick, or in health, in ill fame or good:
Yours will I be, and with that only thought
Comfort myself when that my hope is nought.
The Canonization
(An Excerpt)
Fourteen Lines 
As my knowledge of the Tudor era grows, my admiration for the poets dealing with the ever-shifting police state they lived in grows too. I’ve been working on a Thomas Wyatt piece this month, and brushing up on the intrigues of the time. One discovery: Howard’s father was a Machiavellian piece of work.
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