Note 1. From Certaine Sonets, The Arcadia, 1598. It is a tenable theory that all of the poems in this group contain some reference to Sidney’s love for Stella; certainly this is the case with many of them. Dr. Grosart admits that only long-established precedent withholds him from including them in that section of his edition, and indeed this is not strong enough to prevent his transferring two sonnets which he numbers as cix. and cx. of Astrophel and Stella. He considers this Dirge to have been written upon the marriage of Stella to Lord Rich. (Sidney ii., 3, 4.) Mr. Pollard, in explanation of their original omission from the book, suggests that by some accident Sidney’s own copies may have been destroyed, and that we owe the poem to the fortunate preservation of duplicates by the Countess of Pembroke. Compare Tennyson’s Ring out, wild bells, in In Memoriam, cvi., which is generally supposed to have been suggested by this poem. [back]
