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Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  LXI. Oft with true sighs, oft with uncallèd tears

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Astrophel and Stella

LXI. Oft with true sighs, oft with uncallèd tears

Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)

OFT with true sighs, oft with uncallèd tears,

Now with slow words, now with dumb eloquence;

I STELLA’s eyes assailed, invade her ears:

But this, at last, is her sweet breathed defence.

“That who indeed infelt affection bears,

So captives to his saint both soul and sense;

That wholly hers, all selfness he forbears:

Thence his desires he learns, his life’s course thence.”

Now since her chaste mind hates this love in me:

With chastened mind, I needs must show that she

Shall quickly me from what she hates, remove.

O Doctor CUPID! thou for me, reply!

Driven else to grant by angel’s sophistry,

That I love not, without I leave to love.