Sir Philip Sidney

Astrophel and Stella III

 
 
 

Let dainty wits cry on the sisters nine,

a 
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That, bravely masked, their fancies may be told;

b 
 

Or Pindar's apes flaunt they in phrases fine,

a 
 

Enam'ling with pied flowers their thoughts of gold;

b 
 5

Or else let them in statelier glory shine,

a 
 

Ennobling new-found tropes with problems old;

b 
 

Or with strange similes enrich each line,

a 
 

Of herbs or beasts with Ind or Afric hold.

b 
 

For me, in sooth, no Muse but one I know;

c 
 10

Phrases and problems from my reach do grow,

c 
 

And strange things cost too dear for my poor sprites.

d 
 

How then? even thus,—in Stella's face I read

e 
 

What love and beauty be, then all my deed

e 
 

But copying is, what in her Nature writes.

d 
 
 

Copied from http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/stella3.htm.

Remarks:

Quite unusually, this sonnet's couplet is placed (at least judging by the rhyme scheme) at the start of the sestet, not at its conclusion. This reversal provides the turn between octave and sestet with a kind of abruptness that emphasizes its point that (notwithstanding the elaborations of the octave) this poet has no Muse but Stella herself, whose graces he can only copy.

Paradoxically, this is revealed as a sonnet about Stella only at a remove; and as a sonnet about sonnets, it disparages the form to assert that it achieves its beauty not by any of its “strange similes” but only in imitation of something that is not here except insofar as she is claimed as an inspiration.

 

Presented by the SonneteerWendell Piez, 2003, 2006, 2008, 2016