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Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  XV. You that do search for every purling spring

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Astrophel and Stella

XV. You that do search for every purling spring

Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)

YOU that do search for every purling spring

Which from the ribs of old Parnassus flows;

And every flower, not sweet perhaps, which grows

Near thereabouts, into your poesy wring:

You that do dictionary’s method bring

Into your rhymes running in rattling rows;

You that poor PETRARCH’s long deceasèd woes,

With newborn sighs and denizened wit do sing:

You take wrong ways! Those far-fet helps be such

As do bewray a want of inward touch;

And sure at length, stolen goods do come to light.

But if (both for your love and skill) your name

You seek to nurse at fullest breasts of Fame:

STELLA behold! and then begin to endite.