Whoso List to Hunt - Thomas Wyatt

This is me trying to read poetry aloud... it's my Wyatt's second favourite poem and it was probably written for Henry VIII's second wife. Enjoy and comment!
--
Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind!
But as for me, helas, I may no more;
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that furthest come behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow; I leave off therefore,
Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wynde.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I, may spend his time in vain.
And graven with diamonds in letters plain,
There is written her fair neck round about,
"Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame."

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• hunt
• me
• reading
• non-native
• accent
• brazilian
• voice

[paulzord]

wind is not for winding road here, but wind as in the air that blows across the land.

this may be wrong but i'm fairly sure its with the emphasis on the w not the i - so say it like w-in-d not w-eye-nd

the dashes are supposed to be separate sounds, not making the word longer

actually maybe you know better about the tangere - seeing as it's not even english.

yeah. so take this with a grain of salt, seeing as currently i am just 'some guy on the internet'. very good work though, i don't think i

[LadieGreensleeves]

@paulzord Check this: "Elizabethan pronunciation differed significantly from our own. Vowels were in the process of changing, in a process known as a "vowel shift"--the same process that has given us so many different accents today. Thus there are a number of words that would have made perfect rhymes that now sound like half-rhymes: "love" and "prove," for example. [to be continued]

[LadieGreensleeves]

@LadieGreensleeves In Henry IV, Part One, Falstaff tells Hal, seemingly inexplicably, "If reasons were as plentiful as blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion." There is a pun here, but the modern audience would be hard-pressed to notice it, unless "reason" were pronounced in the Elizabethan manner, which would sound something like "raisin." The pun then becomes obvious, and the line makes much more sense.

[LadieGreensleeves]

@LadieGreensleeves In Julius Caesar, Cassius puns on "Rome" and "room"-- and again the words were pronounced alike." I took it from a website.

1 Thanks for the Thomas pronunciation

2 I've read 'tangere' just as David Starkey did in his Anne Boleyn documentary (French pronunciation)

3 Thanks for the Wyatt pronunciation (though we both don't know if it was this way in the 1600s

4 I didn't mean 'alas', I meant 'helas', in French...

[LadieGreensleeves]

@LadieGreensleeves

5 I know what wind is and it was actually written 'wynde'. Check the Taverner song "Westron Wynde" - once I heard a man singing and he pronounced it as 'w-eye-nd' - a very lovely Tudor song.

6 I can't see a dash in this poem.

7 Sorry if my 'tangere' pronunciation is wrong... so is David Starkey's :-)

Thanks for writing... no need to feel sorry, you haven't offended me at all, hehe.

Have you watched any other videos of mine? This poem was the hardest to interpret!

[paulzord]

Sorry in advance

but if you want some constructive (possibly insulting, depending on how you read this) criticism..

some of you pronunciation could be stronger.

try and copy native english speaker's if possible. (Thomas is pronounced 'tomas' not thomas - i did the th like the sound in the or thimble for ages. this was wrong)

tangere doesn't have an 'h' sound in it

wyatt is said like why - at not white

alas is said like al - ass (quickly and with the emphasis on the l not hey-lass

[LadieGreensleeves]

@paulzord I'm sorry, but I don't feel like copying everyone else's interpretation of the poem... I want to give it my own interpretation. I'm really glad you found it a very good work, but not only the pronunciation depends on the place it comes from but also the century... it's Shakespearean/Elizabethan English, so it's difficult (almost impossible) to know how these words sounded.

[paulzord]

wow, that didn't take long to reply

yeah, i actually forgot that old poems aren't said the same way.. also didn't know how old this poem was.

I only heard you're recital of this yesterday, and didn't get a chance to hear anything else cause i had my exam yesterday on it (and other classic literature) .. another exam tomorrow and i might get a chance to hear osome more after that :)

[paulzord]

dont think i'll put myself reading poetry online anytime soon.