Sonnet 18: With What Sharp Checks

With what sharp checks I in myself am shent,

When into Reason's audit I do go:

And by just counts myself a bankrupt know

Of all the goods, which heav'n to me hath lent:

Unable quite to pay even Nature's rent,

Which unto it by birthright I do owe:

And, which is worse, no good excuse can show,

But that my wealth I have most idly spend.

My youth doth waste, my knowledge brings forth toys,

My wit doth strive those passions to defend,

Which for reward spoil it with vain annoys.

I see my course to lose myself doth bend:

I see and yet no greater sorrow take,

Than that I lose no more for Stella's sake.

Philp Sidney

Sir Philip Sidney (born November 30, 1554, Penshurst, Kent, England—died October 17, 1586, Arnhem, Netherlands) Elizabethan courtier, statesman, soldier, poet, and patron of scholars and poets, considered the ideal gentleman of his day. After Shakespeare’s sonnets, Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella is considered the finest Elizabethan sonnet cycle. His The Defence of Poesie introduced the critical ideas of Renaissance theorists to England. He was buried at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London on February 16, 1587, with an elaborate funeral of a type usually reserved for great noblemen. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and scholars throughout Europe issued memorial volumes in his honour, while almost every English poet composed verses in his praise. He won this adulation even though he had accomplished no action of consequence; it would be possible to write a history of Elizabethan political and military affairs without so much as mentioning his name. It is not what he did but what he was that made him so widely admired: the embodiment of the Elizabethan ideal of gentlemanly virtue.

More poems from same author

Sonnet 1: Loving In Truth Sonnet 13: Phoebus Was Judge Sonnet 20: Fly, Fly, My Friends Sonnet 24: Rich Fools There Be Sonnet 101: Stella Is Sick

Sonnet 18: With What Sharp Checks

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