Silver poets of the sixteenth century

the long version

"English poetry, after the splendid summer sun of Chaucer had set, entered early into a rather wintry phase, in which a stirring of folk poetry and Skelton's odd 'flytings and vituperations' were almost the only relief ... It was a time of welcome renewal--of language, new fancies, new conceits--a looking into the face of nature. New learning, new culture were abroad; freshness touched the sonnets of Wyatt, Sidney, Howard and Ralegh as they penned and composed this excitingly new literary form. In this garden of a world, the poets turned to love as their theme and played upon it with virtuosity--from lines of great artistry and verbal felicity to poems of deep and true feeling."