Sonnet 105: Unhappy Sight

Unhappy sight, and hath she vanish'd by

So near, in so good time, so free a place?

Dead glass, dost thou thy object so embrace,

As what my heart still sees thou canst not spy?

I swear by her I love and lack, that I

Was not in fault, who bend thy dazzling race

Only unto the heav'n of Stella's face,

Counting but dust what in the way did lie.

But cease, mine eyes; your tears do witness well

That you, guiltless thereof, your nectar miss'd:

Curs'd be the page from whom the bad torch fell.

Curs'd be the night which did your strife resist,

Curs'd be the coachman which did drive so fast,

With no worse curse than absence makes me taste.

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 105: Unhappy Sight

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