Introduction to Poem: Is it Possible?

This poem “Is it Possible” is written by famous English poet Thomas Wyatt. It is the part of “The Lover Recounteth the Variable Fancy of His Fickle Mistress”. The ode reminds us of John Donne’s poem “Goe and catches a falling star”. The theme is the same-disloyalty of the beloved. But Donne’s complaint is generalized, declaring the entire female sex disloyal. Wyatt bewails the inconstancy of a particular lady. He is shocked because he believed it was impossible. The lady was so warm and passionate, so sensitive, and apparently so sincere that he could never imagine her leaving him alone. But she did, heartlessly, without a word of apology or a cause worth the name. For example:

Is it possible
So cruel intent,
So hasty heat and so soon spent,
From love to hate, and thence for to relent?

Brief Analysis: Is it Possible

The poet finds it impossible to believe that anybody could have a mind so easily changeable as the weather and the wind. It had always seemed impossible to him that her feelings, reflected in her beautiful eyes, would turn as quickly and as often as a gambler’s dice, The poet feels emotionally smashed because he has been hurled down from an immense height of favor. The anguished cry, “To bring that lowest that was most aloft” is very striking and depicts the state of mind and agony of the heart of the poet. Also, in a stanza:

Is it possible
That any may find
Within one heart so diverse mind,
To change or turn as weather and wind?

As for the fall of the beloved, that is a shock in itself. The poet is however more deeply grieved at his own fall which has shattered his pride in his moral and emotional balance.