| Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904. | | | | Sonnets and Poetical Translations | | XXIII. Finding those beams, which I must ever love | | Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586) |
| | | FINDING those beams, which I must ever love, | |
| To mar my mind; and with my hurt, to please: | |
| I deemed it best some absence for to prove, | |
| If further place might further me to ease. | |
| My eyes thence drawn, where lived all their light, | 5 |
| Blinded, forthwith in dark despair did lie: | |
| Like to the mole, with want of guiding sight, | |
| Deep plunged in earth, deprivèd of the sky. | |
| In absence blind, and wearied with that woe; | |
| To greater woes, by presence, I return: | 10 |
| Even as the fly, which to the flame doth go; | |
| Pleased with the light, that his small corse doth burn, | |
| Fair choice I have, either to live or die; | |
| A blindèd mole, or else a burnèd fly! | | | | |
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