Hunt All You Want

On a literal level, Thomas Wyatt's "Whoso List to Hunt" is about a hunt of a doe, whom the speaker has given up on after a long weary chase. However, it is believed that the poem is symbolically describing Wyatt's failed pursue of Anne Boleyn, in whom King Henry VIII had already claimed interest.

The speaker, possibly Wyatt himself, depicts his deep fondness of the "hind" beautifully: "as she flee afore,| Faintly I follow" (6-7). He cannot control his desire for the "prey", yet no matter how hard he tries, how the chase "wearies [him] so sore" (3), the goal is still unreachable. His self mockery - "in a net I seek to hold the wind"(8) - gives a bitter feeling that earns readers' sympathy. Or maybe that's just me.

Assuming that the doe of the hunt is really referring to Anne Boleyn, Wyatt did a great job in expressing his pain of losing the woman he loves to anther man, certainly better than many breakup songs we here nowadays. Not only does the poem mourns the impossibility of the two being together, it also serves as a warning to all the other men who, like Wyatt, want to woo Boleyn. Basically he is telling, from his own painful experience, other wooers: don't even think about wooing the King's woman, nobody stands a chance!