| Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904. | | | | Sonnets and Poetical Translations | | II. When Love, puft up with rage of high disdain | | Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586) |
| | [First printed in Constable’s Diana, 1594.] |
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WHEN Love, puft up with rage of high disdain, | |
| Resolved to make me pattern of his might; | |
| Like foe, whose wits inclined to deadly spite, | |
| Would often kill, to breed more feeling pain; | |
| He would not, armed with beauty, only reign | 5 |
| On those affects, which easily yield to sight; | |
| But virtue sets so high, that reason’s light, | |
| For all his strife, can only bondage gain. | |
| So that I live to pay a mortal fee. | |
| Dead palsy sick of all my chiefest parts: | 10 |
| Like those, whom dreams make ugly monsters see, | |
| And can cry, “Help!” with nought but groans and starts. | |
| Longing to have, having no wit to wish: | |
| To starving minds, such is god CUPID’s dish! | | | |
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