Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.
Sonnets and Poetical TranslationsII. When Love, puft up with rage of high disdain
Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)[First printed in Constable’s Diana, 1594. ]
W
Resolved to make me pattern of his might;
Like foe, whose wits inclined to deadly spite,
Would often kill, to breed more feeling pain;
He would not, armed with beauty, only reign
On those affects, which easily yield to sight;
But virtue sets so high, that reason’s light,
For all his strife, can only bondage gain.
So that I live to pay a mortal fee.
Dead palsy sick of all my chiefest parts:
Like those, whom dreams make ugly monsters see,
And can cry, “Help!” with nought but groans and starts.
Longing to have, having no wit to wish:
To starving minds, such is god C