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Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  XI. You better sure shall live, not evermore

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Sonnets and Poetical Translations

XI. You better sure shall live, not evermore

Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)

Translated from HORACE, which begins Rectius vives

YOU better sure shall live, not evermore

Trying high seas; nor while seas rage, you flee,

Pressing too much upon ill harboured shore.

The golden mean who loves, lives safely free

From filth of foresworn house; and quiet lives,

Released from Court, where envy needs must be.

The winds most oft the hugest pine tree grieves;

The stately towers come down with greater fall;

The highest hills, the bolt of thunder cleaves.

Evil haps do fill with hope; good haps appal

With fear of change, the courage well prepared:

Foul winters, as they come; away, they shall!

Though present times and past with evils be snared,

They shall not last: with cithern, silent Muse,

APOLLO wakes; and bow, hath sometimes spared.

In hard estate; with stout show, valour use!

The same man still, in whom wise doom prevails,

In too full wind, draw in thy swelling sails!