The (female) speaker states that she and her lover have pledged their hearts to each other, and it’s the best exchange or ‘bargain’ that could have been contrived. This is one of the poems that feature in this long prose work. Instead, it comes from the Arcadia, the long pastoral romance which Sidney wrote. This poem is a sonnet – and, what’s more, an example of the English, or ‘Shakespearean’, sonnet form – but not one taken from Sidney’s sonnet sequence. We’ll conclude this pick of the best Sir Philip Sidney poems with three poems that are not from Astrophil and Stella. He loves my heart, for once it was his own My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides: I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss My true love hath my heart, and I have his,īy just exchange one for the other given: ‘ My true love hath my heart, and I have his’. Look out for the masterly use of ‘i’ sounds at the end of each line of this sonnet, suggesting the eye/night theme of the poem.Ĩ.
But not so for Sidney, or rather Astrophil: his eyes are wide open, like windows letting the darkness in – that external darkness which so neatly chimes with the ‘inward night’ of his mind, thanks to his hopeless love for Stella. Our eyes are like arrows, darting a look here and there but what do we do at night when it’s dark? Sleep, of course. To lay his then mark-wanting shafts of sight,Ĭlosed with their quivers, in sleep’s armoury … To whom nor art nor nature granteth light,
When far spent night persuades each mortal eye, Sonnet 99: ‘ When far-spent night persuades each mortal eye’.
But then, in the final line, we get a classic Sidney twist: into this Edenic world of beauty and virtue, Desire (personified, and suggesting lust and baser drives) is heard to cry out for satisfaction: ‘Give me some food.’ħ. Anyone who wants to know where in nature you can observe beauty and virtue together should look at Stella, for the lines of her figure reveal what true virtue and decency are. That inward sun in thine eyes shineth so …īeauty is meant to lead us to virtue, according to Renaissance ideas of virtue. Of reason, from whose light those night-birds fly Not by rude force, but sweetest sovereignty There shall he find all vices’ overthrow, Stella, those fair lines which true goodness show. Let him but learn of love to read in thee,
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