Ring Out Your Bells
Ring out your bells, let mourning shows be spread;
For Love is dead--
All love is dead, infected
With plague of deep disdain;
Worth, as nought worth, rejected,
And Faith fair scorn doth gain.
From so ungrateful fancy,
From such a female franzy,
From them that use men thus,
Good Lord, deliver us!
Weep, neighbours, weep; do you not hear it said
That Love is dead?
His death-bed, peacock's folly;
His winding-sheet is shame;
His will, false-seeming holy;
His sole exec'tor, blame.
From so ungrateful fancy,
From such a female franzy,
From them that use men thus,
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poem by Philip Sidney
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Psalm 139
O Lord in me there lieth nought
But to thy search revealed lies;
For when I sit
Thou markest it:
Nor less thou notest when I rise:
Yea, closest closet of my thought
Hath open windows to thine eyes.
Thou walkest with me when I walk;
When to my bed for rest I go,
I find thee there,
And everywhere,
Not youngest thought in me doth grow,
No, not one word I cast to talk
But, yet unuttered, thou dost know.
If forth I march, thou goest before;
If back I turn, thou com'st behind;
So forth nor back
Thy guard I lack;
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poem by Philip Sidney
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Astrophel And Stella-Eleventh Song
"Who is it that this dark night
Underneath my window plaineth?"
'It is one who from thy sight
Being, ah! exiled, disdaineth
Every other vulgar light.'
"Why, alas! and are you he?
Be not yet those fancies changed?"
'Dear, when you find change in me,
Though from me you be estranged,
Let my change to ruin be.'
"Well, in absence this will die;
Leave to see, and leave to wonder."
'Absence sure will help, If I
Can learn how myself to sunder
From what in my heart doth lie.'
"But time will these thoughts remove:
Time doth work what no man knoweth."
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poem by Philip Sidney
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Astrophel And Stella-First Song
Doubt you to whom my Muse these notes intendeth,
Which now my breast o'ercharged to music lendeth?
To you, to you, all song of praise is due;
Only in you my song begins and endeth.
Who hath the eyes which marry state with pleasure?
Who keeps the key of Nature's chiefest treasure?
To you, to you, all song of praise is due;
Only for you the heaven forgat all measure.
Who hath the lips where wit in fairness reigneth?
Who womankind at once both decks and staineth?
To you, to you, all song of praise is due;
Only by you Cupid his crown maintaineth.
Who hath the feet whose step all sweetness planteth?
Who else, for whom Fame worthy trumpets wanteth?
To you, to you, all song of praise is due;
Only to you her sceptre Venus granteth.
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poem by Philip Sidney
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Psalm 19: Coeli Enarrant
The heavenly frame sets forth the fame
Of him that only thunders;
The firmament, so strangely bent,
Shows his handworking wonders.
Day unto day doth it display,
Their course doth it acknowledge,
And night to night succeeding right
In darkness teach clear knowledge.
There is no speech, no language which
Is so of skill bereaved,
But of the skies the teaching cries
They have heard and conceived.
There be no eyen but read the line
From so fair book proceeding,
Their words be set in letters great
For everybody's reading.
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poem by Philip Sidney
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You Gote-heard Gods
Strephon.
You Gote-heard Gods, that loue the grassie mountaines,
You Nimphes that haunt the springs in pleasant vallies,
You Satyrs ioyde with free and quiet forests,
Vouchsafe your silent eares to playning musique,
Which to my woes giues still an early morning;
And drawes the dolor on till wery euening.
Klaius.
O Mercurie, foregoer to the euening,
O heauenlie huntresse of the sauage mountaines,
O louelie starre, entitled of the morning,
While that my voice doth fill these wofull vallies,
Vouchsafe your silent eares to plaining musique,
Which oft hath Echo tir'd in secrete forrests.
Strephon.
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poem by Philip Sidney
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