The following version of the poem was used to create this guide: Howard, Henry and Nott, George Fred., ed. The Works of Henry Howard earl of Surrey and of Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder. London: Longman, 1815-16. 2 vols.

Note that all parenthetical citations within the guide refer to the lines of the poem from which the quotations are taken.

Henry Howard had an unusually colorful life. He was born in either 1516 or 1517. His father, Thomas Howard, became Duke of Norfolk, making Henry the Earl of Surrey. He was raised at Windsor Castle and was close to Henry VIII's illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy, who married his sister Mary. He apparently had a hot temper, facing several legal actions in his life, and was the first cousin of Anne Boleyn. He married Frances DeVere and they had five children. He was the first poet to write English sonnets and the first to publish blank verse. He is known as the last person to be executed by Henry VIII: he suggested his sister, Mary Fitzroy, should seduce Henry VIII and become his mistress as their cousin Anne had, and she was so offended she testified against him for treason.

"Love that doth Reign and Live Within my Thought" is one of Howard's most famous sonnets. It is written in the Petrarchan tradition, as Howard was like many early modern English poets influenced by the work of fourteenth-century Italian poet Francesco Petrarca. The poem personifies love as a warrior who flees amidst rejection from a beloved, emphasizing the poem's central theme of unrequited love.