Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.
Sonnets and Poetical TranslationsXIX. My mistress lowers, and saith I do not love!
Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)M
I do protest, and seek with service due,
In humble mind, a constant faith to prove:
But for all this, I cannot her remove
From deep vain thought that I may not be true.
Which poets say, the gods themselves do fear,
I never did my vowed word forsake.
For why should I; whom free choice, slave doth make?
Else what in face, than in my fancy bear.
Tell me the cause of this my causeless woe?
Tell how ill thought disgraced my doing well?
Tell how my joys and hopes, thus foully fell
To so low ebb, that wonted were to flow?
In tender hearts, small things engender hate.
A horse’s worth laid waste the Trojan ground.
A three-foot stool, in Greece, made trumpets sound.
An ass’s shade, ere now, hath bred debate.
To twist those broils, which hardly would untwine:
Should ladies fair be tied to such hard laws,
As in their moods to take a lingering pause?
I would it not. Their metal is too fine.
She saith, “because I make no woful lays,
To paint my living death, and endless smart.”
And so, for one that felt god C
She thinks I lead and live too merry days.
Whose hearts are set on measuring a verse;
Who think themselves well blest, if they renew
Some good old dump, that C
And use you but for matters to rehearse.
Take harp! and sing in this our versing time!
And in my brain some sacred humour flow,
That all the earth my woes, sighs, tears may know.
And see you not, that I fall now to rhyme!
Whilst that, me thought, I justly made my boast
That only I, the only mistress had.
But now, if e’er my face with joy be clad;
Think H
Compared to me, made me in lightness found;
Who Stoic-like in cloudy hue appear;
Who silence force, to make their words more dear;
Whose eyes seem chaste, because they look on ground:
Believe them not! For physic true doth find,
Choler adust is joyed in womankind.