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Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  XXXVI. Stella! whence doth this new assault arise?

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Astrophel and Stella

XXXVI. Stella! whence doth this new assault arise?

Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)

STELLA! whence doth this new assault arise?

A conquered, yielded, ransacked heart to win!

Whereto, long since, through my long battered eyes,

Whole armies of thy beauties entered in.

And there, long since, LOVE thy Lieutenant lies:

My forces razed, thy banners raised within.

Of conquest, do not these effects suffice?

But wilt now war upon thine own begin

With so sweet voice, and by sweet Nature so

In sweetest strength; so sweetly skilled withal

In all sweet stratagems sweet Art can show:

That not my soul, which at thy foot did fall,

Long since forced by thy beams; but stone nor tree

By SENSE’s privilege, can ’scape from thee.