Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. I. Early Poetry: Chaucer to Donne

Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (1554–1628)

An Elegy on Sir Philip Sidney

SILENCE augmenteth grief, writing increaseth rage,

Staled are my thoughts, which loved and lost the wonder of our age;

Yet quickened now with fire, though dead with frost ere now,

Enraged I write, I know not what; dead—quick—I know not how.

Hard-hearted minds relent and Rigour’s tears abound,

And Envy strangely rues his end, in whom no fault she found.

Knowledge her light hath lost, Valour hath slain her knight,

Sidney is dead, dead is my friend, dead is the world’s delight.

Place pensive wails his fall, whose presence was her pride,

Time crieth out, my ebb is come; his life was my spring-tide!

Fame mourns in that she lost the ground of her reports,

Each living wight laments his lack, and all in sundry sorts.

He was (woe worth that word!) to each well-thinking mind

A spotless friend, a matchless man, whose virtue ever shined,

Declaring in his thoughts, his life and that he writ,

Highest conceits, longest foresights, and deepest works of wit.

*****

Farewell to you my hopes, my wonted waking dreams,

Farewell sometimes enjoyèd joy, eclipsèd are thy beams,

Farewell self-pleasing thoughts, which quietness brings forth,

And farewell friendship’s sacred league, uniting minds of worth.

And farewell merry heart, the gift of guiltless minds,

And all sports, which for life’s restore, variety assigns:

Let all that sweet is void; in me no mirth may dwell;

Philip the cause of all this woe, my life’s content, farewell!

Now rhyme, the son of rage, which art no kin to skill,

And endless grief, which deads my life yet knows not how to kill,

Go, seek that hapless tomb, which if ye hap to find,

Salute the stones that keep the limbs, that held so good a mind.