“Luckes” Lesson Plan
Michael Winkelman
June 23, 2026
This lesson on “Luckes My Fair Falcon” by Sir Thomas Wyatt would form part of
a longer unit on poetry, so students would have some familiarity with things like rhyme
scheme and figurative language already. At the beginning of class, the old blues song
“Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” would be playing unobtrusively in
the background. As an ice-breaker question, I would prompt students to write down key
ideas and concepts about friendship, especially in times of adversity. (The word
“adversity” appears in line 6 of the lyric, and students would have been asked to prepare
and annotate the text for homework, including figuring out the pattern of rhyming and
looking up unfamiliar vocabulary such as “forsake” in line 3. While students were jotting
down answers to the friendship question, I’d circulate and spot-check their annotations.)
We would briefly discuss friendship, a topic adolescents tend to have strong views about,
and something we’d later return to when considering the poem’s themes. I would also
have an image of the contemporaneous painting of the King’s falconer by Holbein on a
slide for contemplation (see handout), and I would be sure that everyone understood what
hawking and falconry mean, perhaps by showing a very short video (birds of prey in
action are fairly impressive).
To begin on “Luckes,” I’d provide a very brief 1:00 introduction to the author, Sir
Thomas Wyatt, and the royal court of King Henry VIII, where Holbein painted the
falconer Robert Cheseman and one of his majestic birds, and where Wyatt served as a
courtier and diplomat. Next a volunteer would read the poem. We’d begin our treatment
with quick polls on its comprehensibility, possibly with a show of fingers on a 0-5 scale,
and get some initial reactions to it. I’d also ask if they could paraphrase its overall
message. In addition, I’d be sure they recognized the rhyme pattern, abababcc, known as
ottava rima. The one technical term I’d define would be “apostrophe”: an address to an
inanimate object or absent being, which is actually quite common in English literature.
For example, Juliet apostrophizes Romeo in the balcony scene before he appears, and
Bottom does the same to the moon in the burlesque “Pyramus and Thisbe” scene in A
Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The heart of the class would be a guided, line by line close reading of the poem,
with me coaching the students along, and inviting in full participation and discussion of
its features. The kids would be the ones engaging in the academic labor of explicating the
text, though I’d offer hints and pose leading questions if necessary. We would certainly
be sure to patiently unpack the graphic, vivid anti-poetic simile in line 5, for instance.
“Can someone describe in their own words the image Wyatt uses? What do you make of
it?”
Once we reached the end, we would widen the discussion to take up aesthetic
issues and the friendship theme introduced at the beginning.
For homework or classwork afterwards, students might first be asked to generate
their own original simile about friendship (or maybe about adversity or hawking), and
then would compose a response/reaction paper in which they’d practice writing as a
process: inventing a topic, making an outline, doing a rough draft, and revising/editing/
formatting it. (Unfortunately, precautions now have to be taken to prevent cheating using
AI, a whole big topic in itself.) All this would be useful practice both in careful, slow
reading and for writing an interpretative essay about a suitable short poem on some
related theme that had not been picked apart in class as a concluding assignment within
the unit. Beyond graded work, it is also devoutly to be wished that this kind of mental
engagement would foster an appreciation for poetry. (This lesson plan is also probably
something that would take longer than fifty minutes or so; it might best be broken up into
two days.)
“Luckes” by Sir Thomas Wyatt
Luckes, my fair falcon, and your fellows all,
How well pleasant it were your liberty! [How pleasant that you’re free]
Ye not forsake me that fair might ye befall; [Ye: You]
But they that sometime liked my company,
Like lice away from dead bodies they crawl:
Lo, what a proof in light adversity!
But ye, my birds, I swear by all your bells,
Ye be my friends, and so be but few else.
Winkelman May 1, 2026
Brit Lit
“Luckes, My Faire Falcon”
Author: Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)
Courtier and Ambassador under King Henry VIII, friend of Queen Anne Boleyn
Poetry: 1st sonneteer in English, ballads, lyrics for lute, satires, translations of
Italian love poetry and Penitential Psalms
formal elements / technical terms / notes / questions / commentary