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Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  LXXVII. Those looks! whose beams be joy, whose motion is delight

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Astrophel and Stella

LXXVII. Those looks! whose beams be joy, whose motion is delight

Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)

THOSE looks! whose beams be joy, whose motion is delight;

That face! whose lecture shows what perfect beauty is;

That presence! which doth give dark hearts a living light;

That grace! which VENUS weeps that she herself doth miss;

That hand! which without touch, holds more than ATLAS’ might;

Those lips! which make death’s pay, a mean price for a kiss;

That skin! whose past-praise hue scorns this poor term of white;

Those words! which do sublime the quintessence of bliss;

That voice! which makes the soul plant himself in the ears;

That conversation sweet! where such high comforts be,

As construed in true speech, the name of heaven it bears:

Make me in my best thoughts and quiet’st judgment see

That in no more but these, I might be fully blest;

Yet, ah! My maiden Muse doth blush to tell the rest.