Wyatt’s ‘Patience’ Poems

Abstract

Four poems starting with the word 'patience' are usually thought of as Wyatt's: 'Patience, though I have not', 'Patience for my device', Patience, for I have wrong', and 'Patience of all my smart'. Of these the first two are the most interesting and important. Study of these poems in the Devonshire MS shows how, presumably, they were originally conceived as a pair by the author. The connection was lost when Wyatt revised the two poems so as to make them independent units, as they are in the MS with the highest authority (Egerton). The versions in the so-called Blage MS appear to reflect a transitional stage between Devonshire and Egerton, while variants unique to the Arundel MS are later and without any authority.