CII. Where be those roses gone, which sweetened so our eyes?

Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)

WHERE be those roses gone, which sweetened so our eyes?

Where those red cheeks, which oft with fair increase did frame

The height of honour, in the kindly badge of shame?

Who hath the crimson weeds stolen from my morning skies?

How doth the colour vade of those vermilion dyes

Which Nature’s self did make, and self engrained the same?

I would know by what right this paleness overcame

That hue, whose force my heart still unto thraldom ties?

GALEN’s adoptive sons, who by a beaten way

Their judgments hackney on, the fault on sickness lay:

But feeling proof makes me (say they) mistake it far.

It is but LOVE that makes his paper perfect white,

To write therein more fresh the story of delight:

While beauty’s reddest ink, VENUS for him doth stir.