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Home  »  The Book of Elizabethan Verse  »  Henry Constable (1562–1613)

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.

On the Death of Sir Philip Sidney

Henry Constable (1562–1613)

GIVE pardon, blessèd soul, to my bold cries,

If they, importunate, interrupt the song

Which now, with joyful notes, thou sing’st among

The angel-choristers of heavenly skies.

Give pardon eke, sweet soul, to my slow eyes,

That since I saw thee now it is so long,

And yet the tears that unto thee belong

To thee as yet they did not sacrifice.

I did not know that thou wert dead before;

I did not feel the grief I did sustain;

The greater stroke astonisheth the more;

Astonishment takes from us sense of pain;

I stood amazed when others’ tears begun,

And now begin to weep when they have done.