Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599). The Complete Poetical Works. 1908.
AstrophelAnother of the Same
S
Stald are my thoughts, which lov’d, and lost, the wonder of our age;
Yet quickned now with fire, though dead with frost ere now,
Enrag’de I write, I know not what: dead, quick, I know not how.
And Envie strangely rues his end, in whom no fault she found;
Knowledge her light hath lost, Valor hath slaine her knight,
Sidney is dead, dead is my friend, dead is the worlds delight.
Time crieth out, ‘My ebbe is come: his life was my spring tide;’
Fame mournes in that she lost the ground of her reports;
Ech living wight laments his lacke, and all in sundry sorts.
A spotlesse friend, a matchles man, whose vertue ever shinde,
Declaring in his thoughts, his life, and that he writ,
Highest conceits, longest foresights, and deepest works of wit.
Whose deth (though life) we rue, and wrong, and al in vain do mone;
Their losse, not him, waile they that fill the world with cries;
Death slue not him, but he made death his ladder to the skies.
Who wishing death, whom Deth denies, whose thred is al to long,
Who tied to wretched life, who lookes for no reliefe,
Must spend my ever dying daies in never ending griefe.
Whose equall length keep equall bredth, and never meet in one;
Yet for not wronging him, my thoughts, my sorrowes cell,
Shall not run out, though leake they will, for liking him so well.
Farewell, sometimes enjoyed joy, eclipsed are thy beames,
Farewell selfe pleasing thoughts, which quietnes brings foorth,
And farewel friendships sacred league, uniting minds of woorth.
And all sports which, for lives restore, varietie assignes;
Let all that sweete is voyd; in me no mirth may dwell;
Phillip, the cause of all this woe, my lives content, farewell!
And endles Griefe, which deads my life, yet knowes not how to kill,
Go seeke that haples tombe; which if ye hap to finde,
Salute the stones that keep the lims that held so good a minde.
LONDON
PRINTED BY T. C. FOR WILLIAM PONSONBIE
1595