What is the figurative meaning Sir Thomas Wyatt's poem "My Lute, Awake!"?

This question you ask hits upon a complex point
in criticism of Wyatt's work. Critics generally agree that Wyatt spoke in his poems with
a duplicity that veiled a social or political or cultural truth behind a simpler poetic
truth. For instance, Wyatt's poem “Goo burnyng sighes” [“Go Burning Sighs”] on the
surface, or literally, is a poem about the poetic speaker's inability to persuade his
beloved through

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pitefull plaint & scalding
fyer
that oute my breast doth staynably
stert.

Contemporary English:
[pitiful
complaint and scalding fire
that out my breast does strainably
start].

Yet the figurative
meaning is a veiled and concealed pronouncement that being earnestly truthful and honest
at Henry VIII's court is ineffectual (Hobson/Crewe)

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for trueth & faith in her laide
apert
Alas I cannot therefor assaill
her

Contemporary English:
[for truth
and faith in her is laid aside
Alas, I cannot therefor assail
her]

The poem is a veiled
statement that "craft & art" are needed for speaking the council of truth and
honesty at court:

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I must goo worke I se by craft &
art

Contemporary English:
[I must go
work I see by craft and
art]

This theory of veiled,
concealed, figurative meaning in Wyatt's poems applies in very much the same way to "My
Lute, Awake!." On the surface, the literal meaning is that a suitor for a woman's love
has given up, thrown in the towel, so to speak, and will henceforth quit trying to win
his beloved's love because she not only rejects him, she also scorns
him:

Proud of
the spoil that thou hast got
Of simple hearts thorough Love's
shot,

Yet the concealed,
veiled, figurative meaning is that at court, Wyatt is rejected and scorned by King Henry
VIII when he attempts--through craft and art, or tact and diplomacy--to council truth
and honesty; he is rejected and scorned when he attempts to accomplish what he has
begun: “And ended is that we begun; ….” Just as the suitor in the literal understanding
will give up trying to win the lady's love, so will Wyatt give up trying to persuade
Henry VIII to wisdom as he, Wyatt, had begun to try to
do:

The rocks
do not so cruelly
Repulse the waves continually
As she my suit and
affection:
So that I am past remedy,
Whereby my lute and I have
done.