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Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  LVII. Woe, having made with many fights his own

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Astrophel and Stella

LVII. Woe, having made with many fights his own

Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)

WOE, having made with many fights his own,

Each sense of mine, each gift, each power of mind:

Grown now his slaves; he forced them out to find

The thoroughest words, fit for WOE’s self to groan.

Hoping that when they might find STELLA alone,

Before she could prepare to be unkind;

Her soul, armed but with such a dainty rind,

Should soon be pierced with sharpness of the moan.

She heard my plaints, and did not only hear,

But them (so sweet is she) most sweetly sing;

With that fair breast making WOE’s darkness clear.

A pretty case! I hoped her to bring

To feel my griefs: and she with face and voice,

So sweets my pains; that my pains me rejoice.