LX. When my good angel guides me to the place

Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)

WHEN my good angel guides me to the place

Where all my good I do in STELLA see;

That heaven of joys throws only down on me

Thundered disdains and lightnings of disgrace.

But when the rugged’st step of Fortune’s race

Makes me fall from her sight; then sweetly she

With words—wherein the Muses’ treasures be—

Shows love and pity to my absent case.

Now I—wit-beaten long by hardest Fate—

So dull am, that I cannot look into

The ground of this fierce love and lovely hate.

Then some good body tell me how I do!

Whose presence, absence; absence, presence is:

Blessed in my curse, and cursèd in my bliss.