Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.
Astrophel and StellaXXIII. The curious wits, seeing dull pensiveness
Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)T
Bewray itself in my long settled eyes:
Whence those same fumes of melancholy rise,
With idle pains and missing aim, do guess.
Some that know how my Spring I did address,
Deem that my Muse some fruit of knowledge plies:
Others, because the Prince my service tries,
Think that I think State errors to redress.
But harder judges judge ambition’s rage—
Scourge of itself, still climbing slippery place—
Holds my young brain captived in golden cage.
O fools! or overwise! alas, the race
Of all my thoughts hath neither stop nor start,
But only S