Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904.
Sonnets and Poetical TranslationsXXIV. The Seven Wonders of England
Sir Philip Sidney (15541586)N
But so confused, that neither any eye
Can count them just; nor reason, reason try,
What force brought them to so unlikely ground?
Of Passion, hills; reaching to reason’s sky;
From Fancy’s earth, passing all numbers bound.
Passing all guess, whence into me should fly
So mazed a mass? or if in me it grows?
A simple soul should breed so mixèd woes.
Approaching, warms—not else; dead logs up sends
From hideous depth: which tribute, when its ends;
Sore sign it is, the lord’s last thread is spun.
But when my sun her shining twins there bends;
Then from his depth with force, in her begun,
Long drowned Hopes to watery eyes it lends:
But when that fails, my dead hopes up to take;
Their master is fair warned, his will to make.
Which caught, to cruel search yields his chief part:
(With gall cut out) closed up again by art,
Yet lives until his life be new required.
Though rapt with Beauty’s hook, I did impart
Myself unto th’anatomy desired:
Instead of gall, leaving to her, my heart.
Yet lived with Thoughts closed up; till that she will
By conquest’s right, instead of searching, kill.
Large rooms within: where drops distil amain,
Till knit with cold, though there unknown remain,
Deck that poor place with alabaster lined.
Whose cloudy Thoughts let fall an inward rain
Of Sorrow’s drops, till colder Reason bind
Their running fall into a constant vein
Of Truth, far more than alabaster pure!
Which, though despised, yet still doth Truth endure.
Deep in the earth, what hath in earth receipt
Is changed to stone; in hardness, cold, and weight:
The wood above, doth soon consuming rest.
Of which how much may pierce to that sweet seat
To Honour turned, doth dwell in Honour’s nest;
Keeping that form, though void of wonted heat:
But all the rest, which Fear durst not apply;
Failing themselves, with withered conscience, die.
Which rotting on the rocks, their death do die;
From wooden bones and blood of pitch doth fly
A bird, which gets more life than ship had lost.
Brake on fair cliffs of Constant Chastity:
Where plagued for rash attempt, gives up his ghost;
So deep in seas of Virtue’s beauties lie.
But of this death, flies up a purest Love,
Which seeming less, yet nobler life doth move.
A lady, in despite of nature, chaste;
On whom all love, in whom no love is placed;
Where fairness yields to wisdom’s shortest reins.
A woman’s mould, but like an angel graced;
An angel’s mind, but in a woman cast;
A heaven on earth, or earth that heaven contains.
Now thus this wonder to myself I frame;
She is the cause, that all the rest I am.