Glossary of Poetic Terms

A poem of lament, often directed at an ill-fated love, as in Henry Howard’s “Complaint of the Absence of Her Love Being upon the Sea,” or Sir Philip Sidney’s “Astrophel and Stella XXXI.” A complaint may also be a satiric attack on social injustice and immorality; in “The Lie,” Sir Walter Ralegh bitterly rails against institutional hypocrisy and human vanity (“Tell men of high condition, / That manage the estate, / Their purpose is ambition, / Their practice only hate.”).