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Home  »  Elizabethan Sonnets  »  XXIV. Rich fools there be, whose base and filthy heart

Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.

Astrophel and Stella

XXIV. Rich fools there be, whose base and filthy heart

Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)

RICH fools there be, whose base and filthy heart

Lies hatching still the goods wherein they flow:

And damning their own selves to TANTAL’s smart,

Wealth breeding want; more blest, more wretched grow.

Yet to those fools, heaven such wit doth impart,

As what their hands do hold, their heads do know;

And knowing, love and loving lay apart,

As sacred things, far from all danger’s show:

But that rich fool, who by blind Fortune’s lot,

The richest gem of love and life enjoys;

And can with foul abuse, such beauties blot:

Let him deprived of sweet but unfelt joys,

(Exiled for aye from those high treasures, which

He knows not) grow in only folly rich!