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Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  XXXI. With how sad steps, O Moon! thou climb’st the skies!

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Astrophel and Stella

XXXI. With how sad steps, O Moon! thou climb’st the skies!

Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)

WITH how sad steps, O Moon! thou climb’st the skies!

How silently! and with how wan a face!

What! may it be that even in heavenly place

That busy archer his sharp arrows tries?

Sure, if that long with love-acquainted eyes

Can judge of love, thou feel’st a lover’s case.

I read it in thy looks. Thy languisht grace

To me that feel the like, thy state descries.

Then even of fellowship, O Moon! tell me

Is constant love deemed there, but want of wit?

Are beauties there, as proud as here they be?

Do they above love to be loved; and yet

Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess?

Do they call virtue there, ungratefulness?